Thousands of Gmail (Google Mail) users are reporting that they’ve lost old emails, folders and contacts, due to a technical glitch that probably isn’t Google sifting through email accounts to delete spam.

Google Mail engineers have been hard at work since 1am to try and rectify the issue, which the company care claiming affects less that 0.1% of users. So if you do rely on Gmail, you’d have to be very unlucky to have lost all of your important data.

This is the second bug to strike Google in the past week, following an issue that deleted thousands of appointments from Google Calendars across the world. That issue took over six hours to be fixed, so with a bit of luck Gmail should be back up to speed very soon.

Although we’d be surprised if Google put all the spam emails which they’ve removed back.

The Google war machine rumbles on again. Not content with ongoing conflicts with Facebook, Microsoft and the entire country of China, Google have set their sights on communications service Skype.

Until the end of the year, Gmail users in the US and Canada will be able to make free calls to national numbers, along with calls to the UK, France, Germany and China for just two cents a minute.

Up until now, low cost internet to telephone calls have been dominated by Skype’s service, which also allows for free online video, audio and text communication. With over 560 million registered users and 8.1 million paying customers, Skype are fairly entrenched in the market. To the point that their company name (like Google’s) is used as a verb to describe their key service.

So, will Googling overtake Skypeing as the internet’s primary form of instant communication? Only time will tell on this one.

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A Pivotal Moment for the Internet

I believe this recent clash between Google and China will mark a pivotal moment for the Internet itself. From a political standpoint, we will see the cooling of already chilly relationships to all-new sub-zero temperatures. Google’s next move will leave a lasting imprint on the history of the Internet itself. In today’s official post, Google reminded China that they were not happy censoring results in the country – a move designed to appease the Chinese government some time ago. They went on to say they will revisit this decision, and the broader idea of all their operations in China:

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China

Google’s message could not be clearer – they are considering withdrawing from China altogether. I hope this is not the case, and I will certainly be watching Google’s next move with baited breath.