If you have read any of my other articles, you know that I am a diehard Google fan and really enjoy using the services that Google provides. It is also sometimes difficult to complain about problems when a service is provided free of charge, i.e. Gmail, searching, Google apps, and so forth. But during the past several weeks or so, there have been some problems on a few of the Google sites that I use, some of which have been addressed and some others remain in limbo.

This past week the press has made us aware that Google was experiencing problems for what is called its Personalized Homepage. I use this service and like it very much. Some users lost their settings and the system reverted back to the standard Google page. It now appears that Google had rectified this problem, and all is well.

But there have been other issues during the past few weeks as well. I had trouble getting my Gmail, as did others, for about 12 hours, and there was no explanation of what had happened from Google. There were some other reported problems with Google apps during this same period. Plus I noted that there were three occasions during the past several weeks where I could not access my Google AdSense account.

I think we can all relate to computer problems and some of the glitches that affect us all from individual Internet users to large corporations. We all can understand that their are times that computers just don’t function correctly. We have all experienced the occasional ‘hiccup’ in our systems that cause us problems, than magically disappear for not apparent reason.

However, it would be nice if you folks at Google would let us know that the ‘hiccup’ is on your end before we users jump to the conclusion our systems are the culprit. Case in point. The evening that Gmail was having problems my Outlook Express, which I use for my Gmail account, was doing ‘back flips’ trying to access your mail server. I was presented with errors and finally a lockup of the program. I checked my Gmail account on the web and discovered it was not working as well. It would have been nice if a short message had been posted on your Web site with just a short statement like ‘It’s broke - come back later.’

After the Gmail problem was corrected a nice note to us users to just let us know that a problem occurred would have been a nice touch.

Tags: google, gmail, apps., homepage