Google Docs list suffers an outage (and comes back)

The Google Docs List, the main directory of all of your documents, is apparently having some kind of outage today. On the Google apps status dashboard, Google has marked the Google Docs List as having a “service disruption.” It seems individual Google documents can be opened and edited are otherwise working fine, as are other Google applications. The only issues appears to be with the main Docs navigation page that lists your folders and each file you have stored with Google. We’re checking with Google public relations to see if it is a widespread problem.

Outages for these types of cloud services are rare but do happen now and then. When they occur, it can be frustrating since users who store their document’s online through these services can’t get work done.

The real crisis comes when a cloud provider loses your documents. While today’s Google “404” error is not very reassuring for some folks out there, it is not necessarily indicative of data loss.

Update: A spokesman for Google said, “Some users had trouble accessing their Docs list this morning. The issue should be resolved.” A preliminary estimate says it affected the Docs list of less than 0.5 percent Docs users. (Those Docs list users are a loud bunch though).