I believe Google inadvertently disabled its account deletion facility, which in turn has caused havoc for both users and administrators of Google Apps.
The havoc this created was so widespread that it affected everything including the inability to access email accounts. It also affected the ability to delete domains, something administrators do for a variety of reasons such as re-creating it as a sub-domain.
The major problem for users was that this issue lasted for several days, while Google tried to fix it. In the end the company had to do much of the work manually. A spokesperson told computerworlduk.com: “Because of a related issue last week, we have temporarily disabled the domain deletion mechanism.”
This reminds me of the debacle created by RIM when it had a double outage problem last summer. The disruption that time while lasting only a few days caused so many problems, in particular with the BlackBerry email service, RIM (already in trouble) was having to fight a rearguard action.
What’s more, I don’t think the Canadian outfit has fully recovered from this.
However, it is premature to suggest that this error will create any lasting damage for Google, but I do know of one company that has decided to switch its Google email service to another cloud computing service.
Also, one of the biggest problems for those who use Google’s free services is that the company doesn’t have a proper customer service department. So if you encounter any problems you are stuck until Google resolves them.
Personally, I don’t think this is at all satisfactory.
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