Gmail locks out users for an hour

Today, Gmail went down for a "subset of users" (but from what I can tell it seems like it was everyone). When trying to log in, users were greeted with an uber descriptive error message "Temporary Error (502)". The outage lasted for an hour, and according to the support group, the problem has now been resolved.

The Gmail team is currently aware of a subset of users being affected by the 502 error on login. Our engineers are looking into the issue and we will provide updates here as they become available.

...

[1 hour later] Update - engineers have pinpointed the issue causing the 502 errors and it looks as if users should start to regain normal functioning of their account. Thanks for being patient while we worked to sort out this problem.

This type of thing is what I am referring to when I complain about Google's technical support. If this was truly limited to a "subset" of users, and it happened to be affecting the Google Apps account your business uses to provide email to employees, what good is a simple user group?

As a person who used to administer a Google Apps account with hundreds of users (but have since moved to MS Exchange), I can tell you that this type of thing does happen, and it's impossible to explain what's going on to users. This type of thing ultimately makes both end-users and administrators unhappy, and therefore it's an impossible model to sustain. The answer is a simple, provide real customer service. Here's how I propose Google deals with this important customer service problem.