A 36% failure rate on innovation doesn't faze Google

Interesting read from MediaBistro. Let's put it this way: How many companies would handle a 36 percent failure rate for its innovations? Without getting all panicky, that is? Without committing hara-kiri?

Then there's Google:

Thoughts On Innovation, By Google - MediaJobsDaily

Excerpt:

" ... at any rate, Google, one of the most successful tech companies in the world, has a lot of failures. More than a third of their product launches fail, according to The Next Web ... out of 251 Google projects or add-ons since 1999, 90 have been canceled. Out of 22 major product launches, eight have been huge flops."

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Possible fix (maybe) for mobile Gmail

It was one of those oh-the-heck-with-it ideas, and I still don't know if it was an actual fix. But after five days of being semi-incommunicado I am finally able to access my Google Mail box from my cell phone.

For me, it was simply a matter of changing my email preferences to always use https. Whatever that means.

I was shooting wild here, but not completely. I remembered .https was my default gmail setting for a long time, and I took it off because it wouldn't feed into iGoogle. So I kind of worked backward from there. Maybe it will make a difference in how my email loads, I thought.

So what the hey. Tuesday evening as I was finishing up at work (using the wifi hotspot in the office) I went into my Google Mail settings and clicked on the "always use .https" box. If it worked, great. If it didn't, it cost me nothing to try and I can always try something different later.

In truth, I thought so little of the idea I didn't bother to check until I got home an hour later. I cranked on the cell phone and went to my iGoogle home page. There, gmail refused to load:

--The Gmail gadget does not support the "always use https" preference that you selected in your Gmail settings. Learn more (includes a link from there)--

Just like before. Something, obviously, was happening. But just for grins, I went to my mobile bookmarks and tried to get into my Google mail that way, with https on.

And got in. And read my mail. Like I am supposed to.

Later I checked the Learn More link from iGoogle. It seems https is a lot more secure than http, and is recommended particularly if you're using public wireless Internet like I do. I'm not smart enough to figure a lot of this out, but https is sort of a combination of http and SSL, which is a security thing. But it does create its problems with iGoogle, and https is not an exact science yet. According to Google:

- Errors in the Gmail for mobile application may result in enabling this (always use https) setting.

- Errors in Google Toolbar may result from enabling this setting.

Errors in Gmail for mobile? Shoot, I'm getting more errors from not using that setting. And I really don't care for Google Toolbar, the resource hog that it is. So https it is.

So I'm not able to fully use iGoogle with the https setting on. Shoot, I'd rather be able to actually read and answer my email than just look at iGoogle and see what my most recent email communications are without being able to read them.

When I reported the mobile Gmail problem in this space, I did get a suggestion. Open a Hotmail account and forward my Google mail into that so it can be read. I considered that, but I'd prefer not to go through all this forwarding routine just to read some email.

Meanwhile, the folks at Google were working on the problem. Ethan, who identifies himself as a Google employee in the mobile Google support forum, wrote the following missive Tuesday afternoon:

"Thanks for your reports. The m.google.com team has narrowed down the cause of the 404 errors, but we need your help to investigate further.

"Please visit our secure webform to send us your phone's IP address so our engineers can debug:

http://goo.gl/ThpeQ

"Thanks!

"Ethan

And the matter remained ignored by much of the tech media. I subscribe to several: ReadWriteWeb, Slashdot, TechCrunch, and Mashable! While I'm able to keep up to speed on many tech issues with these, I have not found a word in any of these online publications about mobile Gmail access issues. According to MPCS-ProxyMan in the Google forum, we need to resolve this issue, we have over a million customers who are getting HTTP error 404 for your gmail app ... this is also affecting our android app for gmail." While it's hard to take anything mentioned in a user forum as gospel, I don't think this "over a million" is a funny number. Not at all.

But for me, the "always use https" setting seems to work. I'm not going to argue with the results, at least not right now.

Anyway, there it is. My fix, or maybe it's not a fix. Maybe it really is just in how you hold your mouth. Anyway, you're welcome to try it.

[You tell me: Does this little hack work for you? Anything else work? Are you able to get your mobile Gmail? Please share.]

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Web-enabled cell phones having trouble accessing Google Mail

My Google Mail is acting all weird, and answers seem a little few and far between. But I'm not the only one with this particular problem.

For the record, I really like my Gmail. It is probably the best email innovation since ... well, the computer. It's easy to like the search functions, the way it integrates with other Google tools, and the huge storage. A friend turned me on to Gmail several years ago when it was in beta, and I never looked back. What's Yahoo?

When away from a wireless connection I can usually check my news and process my email by phone. I have a Samsung 451 phone with a slider keyboard. It's good with phone calls on those rare occasions that I actually talk on the phone. It's super with text messages, and I can do a lot of things with it. It can surf the Internet, kinda sorta. The phone doesn't have the Java fixins and the browser is prehistoric, so its Internet powers are limited.

Call it what it is. My phone is not a smartphone. At risk of going all non-politically-correct on y'all here, I'm using a tardphone.

But that's OK, too. While I'm not qualified to be a hacker (in this case, meaning programmer), I can whip up a few baling-wire tricks that can make my computers and phone do things do things you wouldn't expect. I get a lot of mileage out of my tardphone.

So the other day I needed to check my email on the phone. I hit the link out of my mobile iGoogle homepage, like always.

No joy. This error message flashed on my tiny, two-inch screen:

HTTP Error: 404 Not Found

At first blush I thought maybe my links got screwed up. Such things happen. So I tried hand-typing it in:

http://google.com/mail

http://gmail.com

No luck. Let's try the mobile site, although that's usually automatic:

http://m.google.com/mail

http://m.gmail.com

Tried again, this time using https:// as the prefix. Even went so far as to try the straight .html version of Gmail, and got the same result. That error message.

What's odd is that I can access many of my other Google services. I can get the search engine, iGoogle, Google Reader for RSS, Voice, my Gmail contacts through Voice, and my calendar. But not Gmail.

It turns out, though, it's not just me. I'm glad to hear that. I think.

A Twitter search using #gmail as the key shows several others having this problem. As far as the mainstream and tech media, not a peep through Sunday.

Several have written to the Google Support Forum, saying they lost access around Feb 8 (my connection went Tango Uniform on the 11th). Some report losing access to all Google functions (Calendar, etc.), and apparently the problem is not just with tardphones. Real smartphones seem to get this problem, particularly of the Crackberry variety.

A fella named Ethan, who identifies himself as a Google employee in the support forum, seems just as baffled as anyone else. Another person on the forum, The C Man, reported this Saturday: "Google employees are investigating the problem and have not been able to reproduce it."

Already this doesn't sound promising.

It was recommended the user clean out the phone browser cache. I did this, and it worked about as well as it did with some other folks who tried -- like, not at all.

I pulled the battery out, reset the phone, even reprogrammed it in case that worked. Again, nothing. At this point I was so desperate that if the Verizon/StraightTalk folks suggested I dance naked in a bucket of steaming chicken guts during a full moon (now that's a visual for you!) I would have tried it.

So far, this error seems awfully random. Some folks report it, others don't. Some have problems getting access to all Google services, some -- like me -- just Gmail. Several cell phone carriers were involved. The whole thing seems like a crapshoot, one of those problems where no one knows exactly what's going on, how it happened, or how to fix it.

I should feel better that it's not just me, and not just my non-Java phone.

I'd hate to think Gmail is revamping its system so that you can't access it from a tardphone like mine. It could be something that corrects itself in time, but you never know.

Knowing all that, I should feel better.

But I don't.

[As this situation progresses and/or finds resolution, don't be surprised if I report back in this space.]

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