As Michael Eggebrecht, my colleague at sister-site CIOZone reported, the two-hours of radio silence inadvertently observed by Gmail this week has touched off a great debate.

Specifically, the interruption in Google's much-ballyhooed email system has triggered heated arguments about the future of cloud computing. It's also apparently raised questions about whether businesses should risk switching to Gmail -- and that's a market Google is definitely ogling. Indeed, the downtime raised concerns about whether businesses should bail on cloud computing, board up their windows, and pretend nobody's home when the doorbell rings.