Hey Google, Gmail is Awfully Slow!
Posted: July 2nd, 2011 | Author: owocki | Filed under: technology | Tags: gmail, is, slow | 32 Comments »
For a company that makes a lot of noise about how the web should be blazing fast, Google has been awfully slow to address performance concerns in one of their flagship apps, Gmail.
Sometimes conversations can take up to 20 seconds to load. Searches too. Sometimes they will not load at all and a vague “This conversation could not be loaded” message will appear in your browser.
I’ve tried posting on their support forums, contacting Google Apps for Business support, tweeting @google and @dondoge. No one seems to care. Either that, or no one seems to be able to diagnose the issue.
I’ve spoken to many folks, and the problems aren’t just limited to me. I’d love it for someone at Google to at least acknowledge that there are scaling issues in GMail. Please leave a comment below if your GMail or Google Mail for Business account is slow. Hopefully someone at google will listen!
For the record, I love Gmail and it is centric to my workflow day-to-day, which is why it’s so frustrating that no one at Google can help. If you’re reading this post from inside the GooglePlex, shoot me an email. kevin [at] ignighter [dot] com/ I’d love to help you diagnose the issue.
EDIT: Since there’s been questions about whether or not the problem is at my end, here are my system and connection specs: I’m on a state of the art macbook air, and the problems described occur on every modern browser (chrome, firefox, safari)), and they occur on every wifi network I connect to (Cable, DSL). No firewall. 250K conversations in my inbox using 20G of space,
UPDATE 9/5/2012 : Jack Groetzinger has a great post up today about gmail speed workarounds.
UPDATE 10/6/2012: Here are some more Gmail Slowness Fixes.
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It’s hard for me to getu00a0impassionedu00a0on this issue, largely because Gmail, to me, seems like a gift from Google. It’s an amazing tool, and they offer it for _free_. Your point that Google is fanatical about web speed is excellent though. They continue to make great progress on their other applications, but gmail seems to be left behind in a lot of ways.
No, they don’t offer it for free. Google algorithms scan the content of your messages to serve you contextually relevant advertising. That’s how you pay – by tacitly agreeing to look at advertising and, hopefully, click on it. But it ain’t free.
If I’m not paying (money) for it, it’s free. I don’t see why that precludes Google from profiting in one way or another. In fact, I really hope they do!
“If I’m not paying (money) for it, it’s free.”nnYour usage of “free” previously implied that Google doesn’t have to cater or listen to customers of the product. And, if it was a “gift” from Google, that would be the case. But that’s not the case. Gmail is part of a wider profit making strategy. You can argue over semantics, but you don’t get Gmail – or any other Google product – for nothing. You pay some way. And, therefore, you have a right to complain about it when it doesn’t work.
I have the pay version but the free is free. You just install Ad Blocker and never see any ads, and you’re not paying any money. So it’s free.
Assuming of course you don’t think they’re doing anything with your personal data.
That’s not free, that’s theft.
Just curious: u00a0Is there something in the Gmail TOS that states that you agree to view their ads? u00a0If so, it’s theft. u00a0If not, it’s just smart computing.
While I don’t quite think of gmail as a ‘gift’ from google since they do make a profit from it u00a0(also, Ignighter pays them for a corporate account), I think it’s super useful and I’m thankful Google continues to support it. u00a0Right now, it’s the best web-based email client out there. u00a0And it was also one of the first products to usher in the era of modern web apps. u00a0Matter of fact, I think the term AJAX was actually coined inu00a0conjunctionu00a0with this project.nnBut just because it’s free, that doesn’t mean that they should let the product atrophy. u00a0They’re opening themselves up to competition every time the user experience begins to suffer. u00a0They might be the best web-based email client of the moment, but that doesn’t mean they will always be (especially if they continue to ignore feedback from their users)
My Gmail Business Account was unusable because of it was so slow an hour ago. Gave up using it for the moment.
Mind posting your specs? (Browser, connection speed, are you behind a firewall?) u00a0If your problems are similar to mind, perhaps I can help.
I hear rumours (and can only comment from my own experience) that the business version is hosted on different clusters and that they are relatively slow because they are run on a business basis i.e. the cluster/bandwith/whatever causes the bottleneck don’t get no bigger until business gmail/apps gets more customers. Now, that’s just rumours, right?nnFor the record, I use free. And it’s fast.
Interesting. u00a0Could you point me to the direction of those rumours? u00a0I’d love to substantiate them by discovering what cluster my personal and professional accounts are on.
The bit that is rumour is the comparative capacity per user of the business cluster; pretty certain the separation is fact e.g. when Guardian newspapers and others reported outages with their paid-for Google Apps, free was working fine throughout. Presumably something in the T&Cs that paying customers are separated to mollify prospective customers?
I’ve been having these problems for weeks (“conversation could not be loaded” etc.), in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. However, I logged into Gmail at an Internet cafe using Google Chrome, and it was blazing fast. Hmm …
Sounds like your work connection is behind a firewall or a proxy.
I’ve been having a negative experience for months. My business partner almost never seems to get the problems I do, and since the calendar features solve a problem for him, we’re sticking with it. I’m hoping that Mac OS Lion will mean we can dump Google.
Mind posting your specs? (Browser, connection speed, are you behind a firewall?) u00a0If your problems are similar to mind, perhaps I can help.
I’ve switched to using the Chrome Canary build, which is at least twice as fast as Chrome on Google websites (maybe because of their SPDY protocol). I’m now happy with gmail again.
I’ve been experiencing unbearably long delays as I type email messages.u00a0 Nothing I’ve tried seems to work, although sometimes the problem seems to correct itself for a little while. Windows XP, Internet Explorer 8.0, 5.9 mbs.
Slow, slow, slow. I disable everything and it is still slooooow. Capiche???
I agree that the system has become virtually unusable in the last week or so. u00a0It is extremely frustrating; clearing the caches etc doesn’t fix it. u00a0Google – you got me to move all my business mail to your system but now you can’t deliver on your promises. u00a0Please FIX IT.
very slow and almost unusable for me in the past couple of weeks…u00a0
Iu00a0 have a small software business and have used Outlook – POP – Gmail for over a year nowu00a0but am having to reconsided mail server because it is too slow to send mail to Outlook.u00a0 I love the spam filter.u00a0 I looked for a Gmail business version for small office (not an Exchange Server replacement) but they don’t seem to have one.
At the beginning of this year (2011) I was attracted to Gmail business apps by the Google reputation, and all was well for a few months. u00a0The setup with my business domain was insanely easy and it seemed to work well, so I moved my calendar and contacts completely over to Gmail apps.u00a0nnHowever about three months ago I started getting problems which on some occasions (still) renders the system unusable. u00a0It tells me that a connection cannot be achieved, or that is is “still working” or “loading” for minutes at a time. u00a0Sometimes it says a connection cannot be established. u00a0I retry and it connects; but often you can wait for minutes for it to refresh. u00a0Any other webpage loads instantly so I don’t see how it could be other than a Google problem.nnI have about a gigabyte of mail on the system (around 13% of my free quota).nnI was actually contemplating PAYING for a full business service; however I am really having my doubts now.
Gmail takes 3-4 days on average to send my emails!!
I had this problem too, especially when loading the browser for the first time of the day, for some reason, disabling SPDY made it go away:u00a0http://www.jamiestarke.com/2011/09/02/are-googles-services-running-slow-in-chrome-try-disabling-spdy/
The below –use-spdy=off tip worked wonders for me. Finally!
Glad to hear it worked!
I’ve been using Gmail for years and it has never been slow. I have tried other service providers such as Yahoo!, AOL and Hotmail, but Gmail beats them hands down
slow, unresponsive and frustrating. I would wait a little loger and then consider to switch.
Unfortunatelyu00a0I made the mistake of setting up 8 companies on google apps for business. The support is terrible and speed and connectivity issues on all services (docs, gmail, etc) are constant. I do not recommend google apps for anything other than personal use.