Yes, Gmail goes down occasionally. Less often than most email services I’ve ever had to work with in the corporate / university environment, but that never seems to cause the drama and strife of a Gmail outage. While I really like Gmail, and use it for most of my email needs, I don’t have a fit when it’s out. It helps me organise my email well – inbox zero, ever day – and the time I save using it more than counters the occasional outage.

That said, it’s indicative of how reliant we have become on SAAS, and I think that’s problematic.

If your work means that you need to be able to contact people immediately, you should have their phone number and Skype address, at a minimum.

If you need access to your calendar, export it to ical or outlook so you have a local copy.

If you need access to data in your email account, save a local copy or back up on a second email account.

If you don’t have these concerns, chill out. Have a cup of tea. The email flood will start again shortly.