I've just praised earlier in the week the GMail team for doing such a good job with the updates that would catch up soon with Yahoo!'s Mail at the rates things were going. Well, what do you know, they've just started goofing up on the PR side of it.

Reasons for the accounts being suspended have not been given to the respective account "owners", so they don't know what it is they have done wrong in case they will be given the accounts back, and so they have no means of knowing what not to do again. Most likely, it's about the aggressive use of the IMAP technology that has been implemented not too long ago. Not even AdSense, the previous Google service that acted in the same way, banning users' accounts, failed to at least hint at what that had happened, they told you why, but would nor disclose when, where or how the invalid clicks were found.

Google says that it reserves the rights to:
* Suspend a Google Account from using a particular service or the entire Google Accounts system, if the Terms of Service or product-specific policies are violated.
* Terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.

No wonder the Mountain View based company got a big 0 in the openness field in a recent survey. Does that sound like something you would agree to under normal conditions? Would you trust your entire mail history to a company that says it reserves the right to make it all gone without giving you a reason? I thought so.

The good news, for those who have been "abusing" their IMAP and getting their accounts disabled because of it, is that it usually takes 24 to 72 hours until they are restored. Nevertheless, this is to GMail's reputation what the iceberg was for the Titanic. It won't entirely sink it, though, but it will seriously damage it.