Update: Google posted a message at 2:45 a.m. Pacific Time to the Postini Support Panel and help forum, explaining that the delayed mail issue was resolved and that no mails were deleted. They also apologized:  “We sincerely apologize for the impact to your organization and users. We will post an incident report, which includes the root cause analysis and corrective and preventative actions, within the next 48 business hours.”

Some clients of Postini, the Google-owned mail service security company, are experiencing major delays with incoming e-mails today.

Google spokesman Jay Nancarrow responded via email to our inquiry about the mail delay (not an outage): "We're aware of an issue that's causing a delay in mail delivery for some Postini customers in the U.S., and are working to fix it as quickly as possible. Outbound mail is fully functional, but inbound mail has been flowing at a reduced rate for affected users. We know how important mail is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously, and apologize for the inconvenience. We encourage anyone having technical difficulty to visit the Postini support portal at https://www.postini.com/support/support_login.php."

According to the Postini Services help forum, some users are experiencing mail delays of up to four hours. Some were having issues with the support site, and many are frustrated with the lack of an official announcement. Jpcnc, who says he/she has been a Postini admin for 7 years, writes on the forum: "Google you are a total failure and the process to move all my clients away from your products has begun."

Ouch.