You need to set up a separate password for accessing Google Apps including GMail.  So going through the normal procedure you would find on the web will not work, including the steps outlined on Outlook and Google’s own site.  To make this work, you need to go here..

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en

Follow the steps and you will get a new password.  Then start the account process over again within Outlook.  BE SURE to remove any selections that save your password.   Enter the new password and Outlook should start working with your GMail Apps account.   Once this is working correctly, then you can turn the remember password options back on again.

Hope this helps.

If this is the case, can Google adjust? Sure, I would bet with a little tweaking of the servers they will be running smooth in a week.  But for now, I’m going to be keeping a close eye out.  You never know, could be even more downloads as non iOS 5 users like myself start using the app.

Now if you do not use Gmail in any professional manner, then this is most likely not worth bothering about. Gmail goes does down so infrequently that I cannot remember the last time I could not get to it.  However, Murphy’s Law says the ONE time it goes down, is the one time you REALLY need to get access.   So here is a link to synchronize your Gmail to Outlook.  Good for making backups too.

BTW, setting up Gmail to Outlook is pretty easy.  Here is tutorial I used..

Connect Gmail to Outlook.

But lets think about this for a second. If suddenly, without warning, my email was cut off, AND if that was my primary, or worse, only email system.  Then that means I lost all of my messages AND contact information. To get around the problem you can access other systems that read in your email from Gmail and still function. But what are you really accomplishing here but reinforcing the fact that you do not trust your own population.  I can imagine a few business people that rely on gmail being pretty pissed off losing past emails and contact information.

This will be interesting to watch.  I will guess most people will have found a workaround before thursday; and I also do not imagine a national system will be up anytime soon.

As for getting to GMail without using gmail, there are a number of solution depending on how its blocked.  For example, if mail.google.com is NOT blocked, you can at least read you email via RSS from this link.

https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom

You can also use a service like NetVibes or other feed readers. As for sending?  If your on a mac, perhaps something like mailplane which SEEMS to work outside of the web client.

Some on twitter are suggesting we need a gfail icon as with the fail whale. A few suggested a gfail goat. Sure, why not? So I whipped something up really quick.

Other thoughts and suggestions?

Also, I just heard from @mager via twitter that GMAIL basic HTML works. Did not test because the site came back as I was making the icon. HOWEVER… I have a lot of old duplicate email now. Grr….