Google (GOOG - news - Cramer's Take - Rating) revealed a glitch in what may be its second-most successful service, ranking only behind search.
The company confirmed Friday that some users of Gmail, its popular email service, had their email accounts wiped out, with messages and contact information being permanently deleted.
The glitch affected about 60 users, who "lost some or all of their email received prior to Dec. 18," Google spokeswoman Courtney Hohne wrote in a prepared statement. "We have extensive safeguards in place to protect email stored with Gmail and we are confident that this is a small and isolated incident."
Hohne declined to comment on what caused the problems, saying it is Google's policy not to divulge what takes place behind the scenes with its products. But readers of popular blog TechCrunch, among the first to report the incident, say the deletions may be caused by hacker attacks.
"This is not a mistake. All your emails and contacts have been deleted on purpose. This was a malicious attack and not an error," wrote in one reader, who claimed to have had his Google account deleted.
Another reader said that security issues with a version of the popular Firefox browser, which can be used to access Gmail, could have allowed the service to be hacked.
The incident is noteworthy whether it is a malicious hacker attack or a simple accident because Google is frequently celebrated for the security and reliability of its technology.
In this week's issue of The Economist magazine, Arizona State Iniversity information technology head Adrian Sannier, whose school decided to adopt the Google's email system, says, "I have a staff of about 30 people dedicated to security. Google has an army; all of their business fails if they are unable to preserve security and privacy."
Sannier says Google once showed him a picture of one of its data warehouses that burned down. "The point, however, was that no users of Google services anywhere even noticed, because Google's systems are built to be so robust that even the loss of an entire data centre does not compromise anybody's data," Sannier tells the magazine.
The latest wipeout was limited to a relatively small number of users, given that Gmail has attracted tens of millions of users since it debuted in 2004. Still, it shows that Google's vaunted technology platform is far from invincible.
The incident also occurs on the heels of some setbacks with other Google services. Google's recently launched and heavily promoted Checkout service, for example, has reported errors. The company also recently shut down its Answers service, marking the first pubic closing of a significant Google service -- even as a similar service offered by rival Yahoo! (YHOO - news - Cramer's Take - Rating) continues to thrive.