"I hate to tell you this, but the very nature of any online
service or SaaS (software as a Service), leads to frequent
failures. This wasn't the first time Gmail failed. It won't be the
last. Deal with it.
"One of the reasons why Google enabled you to use Gmail offline
was so that you could keep using it when you couldn't go online. It
also works just fine when the Gmail servers fall down and go
down.
"If you can't handle the fact that Gmail isn't a 99.9999% uptime
application, you really need to stop relying on any SaaS. None of
them are that stable. Sometimes, the servers' breakdown, sometimes
a backhoe rips out your T3, DSL, or cable connection; sometimes the
moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, and in
every case, the application breaks. That's life."
