We made a commitment last year to increase transparency and communication with Google Apps customers in several ways. We heard your feedback around the need for better communication when issues like yesterday's Gmail outage occur.As part of that commitment, we're pleased to announce today the availability of the Google Apps Status Dashboard.
I think Google's recent response to the Gmail outage was pretty well handled. I just received an email explaining it. They are giving out more than enough service credits to paying customers and now they've come out with the Status Dashboard only a few days after. That's fair enough handling of the situation for now.