Gmail outage plunges millions in the dark..for 3 minutes

Gmail down : Outage goes national

Gmail went down this afternoon for a total of 3 incredibly long minutes but it was enough to start a Twitter debate that is now trending.

We've got word from the east coast that due to some extreme fuel shortages, data centers, and their backup facilities are in danger of losing power despite being prepared.

There have been some notable website outages such as Gawker.com , Squarespace.com and the Huffington Post since the aftermath of the storm. Whether the Gmail outage was due to a data center power failure is not yet clear.

As we move into 2013, the importance of digital infrastructure will grow, and outages, even small ones could effect hundreds of millions of people in a matter of minutes. We've got proof of that today, and maybe it's time to think about long term preparations to protect major digital online infrastructure such as emails, communication tools, Netflix, Pinterest and of course Tumblr…