The end of my love affair with Google?

It's been a couple days and still no Gmail. I suppose I'd feel a little bit better if an autoresponder or some little bit of technical wizardry had let me know that Google was actively looking into this and would have me up and running in no time. However, I haven't even gotten a "Please do not respond to this email" acknowledgment of the Gmail agony in the alternate account I provided for them.

I've loved Google from the moment one of my students invited me to Gmail a few years ago. Since then I've accumulated hundreds of thousands of messages, used Google Docs extensively, blogged in Blogger, and otherwise utterly embraced all things Google. They're slick, ubiquitous, and free. I guess you get what you pay for.

I had even been looking at Google Apps for your domain (free to educational institutions) as part of a revamp of our communications infrastructure this coming fall. Then they disabled my account without warning and refused to offer a word of sympathy. I know I'm just one lowly teacher turned blogger, but this is a swift kick in the pants from a company that is now too large to even bother with an autoresponse.

It's a sad day when the great and powerful Google, the anti-Microsoft, lets me down. I guess this is why people pay for domains and email; it sure would be great to call someone right now, open up a support ticket, and begin looking forward to a swift resolution. Instead, I'm just using one of the non-Googles right now so I can have mobile email (the district's ISP doesn't support mobile access yet to their webmail portal).

I wonder if I can somehow use this whole fiasco to convince my wife that I really need some sort of new technology (or at least my own domain and email).  Maybe a Blackberry would make me feel better.  Or some little bit of validation from Google.