Let me understand this logic: A lot users cannot use Google Apps but since there are some user for whom the service works Google can say "100% uptime" - since problem is in a single data center.

That is reason 37signals kicks ass: today some users had issues updating posts (I was not affected) but they said that on the status page.

Cloud service are important for some companies. Not an "ad clicking playground".

Apologize for being sarcastic and angry: I just hit me in nerves when I see somebody saying how Google Apps are great when they are not and my business suffered a lot because of their "prima donna" behavior.

I don't know what the criteria for calculating uptime is, but I know that if you have 1 billion users, if every time more than 2 of yours users can't reach your servers you consider that downtime, you'd probably be 100% down. If you know how many Google Apps users couldn't use the apps and that number was substantial, you have a point. But if you have no idea how many people had that problem, it is possible that the number was very small and that you were just unlucky. Personally, I've found all of Google's services very dependable.

> A lot users cannot use Google Apps but since there are some user for whom the service works Google can say "100% uptime"

Complex systems like Office 365 or Google Apps very rarely go down completely. Let's say you have a million users using the system for one hour. One of them can't get access to anything in the system. In this hour, you can consider the system had an uptime of 99.9999%.

It's often more complicated, as the users can get access to parts of the system while others show missing or outdated information or some functionality doesn't work.

I too get frustrated by Google's attitude sometimes, but let's face it: they serve a lot of people. It wouldn't be practical to offer human assistance and, if they did, you'd end up waiting for hours until you got to a knowledgeable human being.