If you happen to be a Gmail user you probably noticed (as if you couldn’t) that the mail was down recently. Was it your fault? Of course not. It was Google’s fault.

Regular readers know that I (Rich, not Dave) don’t exactly have a fondness for Gmail due to its beta-riffic way of working - correction - not working in this instance.

More than a few have said that e-mail is going the way of the dodo but this Gmail outage definitely proves that to be 100% wrong. E-Mail is still an absolute vital means of internet communications that will continue to exist for many, many years. Proof of this is exemplified in the outpouring of outright anger from Gmail users when the mail didn’t work.

If one were to evaluate the importance of e-mail to other internet communication mediums, here’s how it fares out:

If a social networking site such as MySpace or Facebook has an outage, nobody really cares. The reaction is always the same. "Well.. it always sucked, so.. I guess I’ll just wait until they fix it." This also applies to microblogging sites like Twitter.

If an instant messaging service has an outage, people somewhat care. The typical reaction is "Well, that’s okay. I can send a text message via my phone until the service comes back online in a few hours."

When the mail stops flowing, this is when people go nuts because that’s where the truly important stuff happens. Online banking and a ton of billing systems are tied to e-mail. Attachments of important documents, other files and the like are stored in e-mail. Your electronic receipts for things you buy are in there. When the mail stops - even for just a few hours - this is bad.

One quickly comes to a realization that yes, the communications that matter really do happen in e-mail and nowhere else.

And although I don’t use POP3 mail, this outage does score a point for those that use it because even if the mail is down, you’ve got a local copy stored in the mail client. At least in that instance you’re down but not out. When all your mail is stored on the internet and your mail service goes down, you are truly down and out until it comes back.

ComputerWorld reports that MobileMe users (Apple’s replacement to .Mac) were quite upset due to the fact the e-mail service had a four-day outage. In the world of e-mail, days can seem like years and this is especially true for mobile users who send tons of e-mail.

To the best of my knowledge I have never known any e-mail service to be down for 4 days in a row; this is absolutely unheard of.

And it’s even more rare that paid e-mail service (which MobileMe is) has this kind of outage. Ouch. If you’re e-mail is free then it might take the sting away a bit… but when you pay for it? That’s just bad all around.

It would seem that Apple users are better off using free Gmail.