Google says it has fixed the Gmail glitch

Google apologised Monday for the Gmail glitch. The company said it expects to fully restore the Gmail accounts of users who saw their emails deleted from their inboxes over the weekend.

“We hope to have everybody back by the end of the day,” said Andrew Kovacs, a Google spokesman. “It is our expectation that we will restore all accounts.”

Over the weekend some Gmail users reported major problem with Google’s emails service — specifically, that all of their emails, labels, themes, folders, and other personalised settings have all been erased.

Gmail help forums were filled with users who had experienced the same problem. according to users they were able to receive new messages, but that none of their previous email were appearing. Users contacts were untouched. The problem only affected a subset of Gmail users.

“I have lost ALL on my emails/folders etc. from gmail. Why would this happen? How can I restore everything?” wrote user bkishan.

“I was on my eMail normal and when I refreshed all my account settings, eMail, labels, contacts etc has just disappeared. I was running at 80% capacity is that anything to do with it? Is there a way that one can restore all of that?” asked another.

Later on Monday, users affected by the wipe reported that their accounts had been disabled entirely and that all access to gmail functions such as Calendar, Google Reader and Documents has been blocked. Email sent to disabled accounts bounced back with a message that “Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently.”

“My account has also been disabled. I am not happy with how they are handling this. I shudder to think of what correspondence my business is missing while the account is down,” Sarasparks wrote in one message thread on the Google help forum.

According to Google less than 0.02% of the users of the email service had been affected by the problem, fewer than previously reported. The search giant had said earlier the problem affected 0.08% of Gmail users.

Google has not release official figures for the total number of Gmail users but it has estimated a number around 200 million.

Gmail disruptions, while rare, are seen by some industry analysts as a setback to the Mountain View, California-based Google’s efforts to promote Gmail and other Web-based services to businesses.