“I know that some of you have been experiencing problems loading accounts and are redirected to basic HTML view,” wrote the Guide on a Google Groups forum.  “We need your help to resolve this!”

That’s a little disconcerting, although, all in all, probably fair enough – better a public effort to fix things than a behind-the-scenes, we’re-screwed nervous breakdown.  Of greater concern is the empty inbox issue.  This doesn’t appear to be widespread – and “this,” by the way, is exactly what you’d imagine judging by the name of “empty inbox issue” – but it’s becoming a sort of scary tale.

All the more so because Google hasn’t acknowledged the existence of a problem on its end.  Of course, the company will be hard-pressed to prove a negative, and there may be nothing to admit.  Still, the reports were enough to make Tamar Weinberg write, “Thankfully, that’s not happening to me or any other forum members for that matter,” and I have to echo her sentiment.

Stay tuned – Google seems ready to discuss one of the two problems, anyway, so we’ll hopefully hear when it gets fixed.