I'm really not sure where these comments are coming from. I use dozens, maybe hundreds of different web services, and I have had every single one go down on me at one point or another except for Google services. This is the first Gmail outage I've ever seen, and if they stay this infrequent (10 - 30 minutes per ~5 years or 0.000011% downtime) at this price, I'm totally fine with that.

Now, Google could be better about this. It's the implication that they're somehow not good in the first place that's so off-putting.