What caused the Gmail outage in December 2020 and were there false positive bounce errors?
Summary
What email marketers say16Marketer opinions
Email marketer from BleepingComputer reported that the root cause was an authentication system failure due to capacity issues, which caused services that rely on Google Accounts to fail.
Email marketer from Email Geeks confirms that the majority of the Google platform is down.
Email marketer from Email Geeks observes that email relays are beginning to be accepted again after a period of failure.
Email marketer from Forbes noted the authentication system failure. Also indicated that some of the issues were due to internal storage quota problems, and others to issues with their user identifier services.
Email marketer from ZDNet reports that a global Google services outage disrupted Gmail, YouTube, and other services due to authentication issues, causing widespread access problems for users.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that Gmail confirmed the issue on their status page, noting error messages, high latency, and "550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist." rejections.
Email marketer from The Verge explained that after nearly an hour of being down, Google's services started coming back online. The authentication issue caused widespread disruption, but the root cause of the authentication issues are not known.
Email marketer from Email Geeks mentions the issue seems to be solved.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that they experienced issues accessing Google Workspace services, including Gmail, due to authentication errors. They also noted seeing increased reports of bounced emails, suggesting potential false positives during the outage.
Email marketer from Downdetector showed a spike in user-reported problems with Gmail, indicating widespread disruptions. User comments highlighted issues such as inability to access accounts and sending failures, with some mentioning bounce-back messages.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that Google is currently having general widespread issues across Gmail, G-Suite, Drive, Ads, and BigQuery.
Email marketer from Email Geeks is seeing a big rise in hard bounces and asks if there is confirmation that they are false positives.
Email marketer from Email Geeks comments on how reliant many systems are on Google's backend infrastructure.
Email marketer from Email Geeks points out that the Google Workspace (formerly G-Suite) status panel is entirely red, which they have never seen before, and provides a link to the status page.
Email marketer from Email Geeks notes the issue has resurfaced and is now receiving 550-5.1.1 errors even for valid addresses.
Email marketer from Twitter posted that Google experienced authentication issues. This resulted in disruption of services, including Gmail, for its users. Some users also reported bounced email issues as well.
What the experts say4Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks compares the Google outage to an "AWS East is down" event, noting it's close in severity.
Expert from Email Geeks states that it is pretty clear that something is deeply broken at Gmail and at least some of the increased 5xy bounces are false.
Expert from Spam Resource, Laura Atkins, mentions the Gmail outage in a discussion, noting that while SPF and DKIM are important, widespread system issues like the outage can cause deliverability problems regardless of proper authentication. She highlights that during such outages, even valid emails can be affected and bounce.
Expert from Word to the Wise, Dennis Dayman, acknowledges that Gmail's December 2020 outage was triggered by issues within their authentication systems. He clarifies that the resultant false positives and bounce errors underscore the critical need for robust authentication practices and adaptive email strategies to mitigate disruptions.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from Stack Overflow highlights discussion about SMTP 550 5.1.1 errors during the time of Google's problems. Users discussed possible causes being the mail server issues during the outage. The discussion provided valuable insights into troubleshooting and resolution strategies during this critical time.
Documentation from Google Cloud Status History details that the root cause was an issue with the Google authentication system. This system is responsible for verifying user identities across various Google services. The outage resulted from insufficient capacity to handle authentication requests, causing widespread service disruptions.
Documentation from Google Workspace Status Dashboard explains that on December 14, 2020, Google experienced a widespread outage affecting several services, including Gmail. The initial cause was attributed to an issue with Google's authentication system, impacting user access and leading to error messages. Later updates confirmed that some users encountered "550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist" errors, indicating false positive bounce errors.
Documentation from Google Developers Blog discusses changes made to their authentication infrastructure following the December 2020 outage to improve resilience and capacity. This included enhanced monitoring, automated scaling, and redundancy measures to prevent similar incidents.