Google Apps ate her emails...
Although I use Microsoft BPOS myself (after realising the fail in Google mobile sync technologies last year), my relatives' small business have their email hosted with Google Apps Premiere.
The reason we used Google apps Premiere for their email is that we could use the Google Apps Outlook Sync for Microsoft Outlook. After all we don't want to impact their small organsation, and keep things running as before, right? For them that meant keep using Microsoft Outlook and Google Apps Outlook Sync for Microsoft Outlook indeed provided for that.
All was going well for the first year, I say. Quick and easy. But then they decided to go on a travel and instead of taking their large laptop, they decided on a HP Mini. Installed Outlook and Google Apps Outlook Sync for Microsoft Outlook on that and off they went.
Last weekend we all went to Napier for a sad family event. They took the HP Mini with them. On Saturday evening we started the laptop, opened Microsoft Outlook, to be told by Google Apps Outlook Sync for Microsoft Outlook that it needed to re-sync.
Now, the options were re-sync, or overwrite the contents on the laptop. And over mobile data "overwrite the contents on the laptop" seemed overkill. We are talking about a gigabyte or so over mobile, which is not exactly cheap.
So we opted for re-sync. And it worked for about an hour on that...
On Monday, she found out all emails from May through July were gone from the main laptop. They were also gone from the Google Apps Mail web-based application.
May was the last time the HP Mini was used, and since then only their large laptop. Last weekend "re-sync" seems to have assumed any missing emails were not actually "missing" but "deleted" and proceeded to remove from the server. They are not even in the Deleted folder. They are gone. Three full months of emails gone. Like that...
It seems Google doesn't quite work well when synchronising two devices and the same account in the cloud.
Someone is not happy, which makes me unhappy. And someone is being advised to move to a hosted Exchange solution, possibly the same Microsoft BPOS I use now.
Google, this was the second strike.
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Comment by Shawn Hamman, on 26-Aug-2010 12:48
It makes me sad to see Google fail. Especially mail since I have a deep love for it myself.
Comment by buzzy, on 26-Aug-2010 14:01
"A fundamental principle of systems design is to "own your data". Assuming the likes of Google, Amazon, and other cloud providers to be responsible enough to protect your data is a major flaw in thinking."
What a nineties school of thought. That kind of ownership paradigm has been completely replaced by cloud computing. What are you living under a rock or something?
/sarcasm
Comment by Jaymz, on 26-Aug-2010 16:30
I assume that there was no backup taken of the main laptop?
Not to sound too harsh or anything, but not having a backup - even with cloud based services - is giving yourself a single point of failure.
Although google probably will never go away, trusting them with your only copy of data is not a good idea.
My 2 cents anyway.
Comment by integrator, on 26-Aug-2010 17:46
I'm wondering why anyone would bother with the sync tool, I merely view it as a cheats migration tool to transfer existing mail.
Kinda defeats the purpose of GMail using pop/imap.
If you want an offline copy use Gears...
Just another 2c worth.
Comment by Jim McNelis, on 27-Aug-2010 03:38
In this case, you should have used the browser rather than re-syncing outlook while not on a solid network and not knowing how the sync tool was configured or would behave. Bummer this happened though. The good news is Google doesn't actually delete the messages for 30 days, so you can recover the missing ones from the trash, if the sync tool did "delete" them. Are the messages missing from outlook or gmail altogether?
Comment by Ragnor, on 27-Aug-2010 10:37
Yeah basically I wouldn't recommend Google Apps as the mail provider for anyone who wants to continue to use Outlook.
IMAP support in Outlook is pretty terrible and Google Sync is a band aid to get things working with Microsoft's proprietary protocols.
Thunderbird 3 is really come a long way and is a great email client if you want to keep using Google Apps.
If you setup IMAP in a disconnected mode, it will always keep a local copy of your mail (similar to pop).
Comment by MakX, on 27-Aug-2010 17:42
Never had an issue with my free version of Google Apps. 7GB of space, subtle ads and full support for IMAP/POP/SMTP and Sync to my iPhone. Perfect.
Comment by BPD, on 28-Aug-2010 08:19
It should be noted that no one has correctly pointed out that Google Apps Outlook Sync for Microsoft Outlook in fact uses the MAPI protocol (Microsoft's proprietary protocol), not IMAP/POP. Relying on Outlook as a client for anything is a mistake in the first place, IMHO. If users are simply given 15-30 minutes of helpful hints on the web-based interface for Gmail/Apps, they'll nearly always find numerous efficiencies and a better user experience from the 90s technology that Outlook has grown from.
Comment by Alan Paulk, on 17-Nov-2011 11:37
Same thing happened to me, I'm going back to hosted exchange. Google's got a lot of neat tricks and all, but at the end of the day its not business-class. If you stay within its confines, it is actually more reliable, but its confines are too confining for me. Client side installed software is just so fast, web-based stuff is like trying to run under water. I'm tired of it.
Incidentally, did you ever figure out a way to confirm what happened to those emails? Is there a log or something in Google Apps Sync?
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Comment by Gary Benner ITCP, on 26-Aug-2010 11:54
A fundamental principle of systems design is to "own your data". Assuming the likes of Google, Amazon, and other cloud providers to be responsible enough to protect your data is a major flaw in thinking.
At any point in time you need to be able to locate, copy, move, backup and restore your data directly.
Anything less than this will lead to problems.