I read about some Google problems the other day and just experienced some of my own. Yesterday, when trying to log into my gmail account, I received an error that the service was unavailable. Its amazing how much we have come to rely on these free services. It does make me glad that I still use a thick mail client for my main email usage though.
The recent problems reinforced something that I realized about them when I was out there recently. That Google is essentially the same as most other IT companies around. They have problems just like anybody else does. Fortunately they have built things in a way that usually allows the problems to go un-noticed by users. It seems, however that with the added complexity of their applications, and with all of the new people being hired, that some of their rough edges are starting to show a little.