Google pays for e-mail outage with 15-day credit

Google Inc is making amends for an e-mail outage by giving 15 days of free service to businesses, government agencies and other subscribers who pay for an expanded version of the product.

The concession is meant to placate customers who were cut off from their e-mail accounts yesterday for as long as four hours. The outage caused more inconvenience in Europe and Asia than in the United States.

Most people use the free version of Google's Gmail. The company sells a more sophisticated version of Gmail as part of a software bundle that costs $50 annually per user.

Google had offered a 15-day credit to compensate for a less severe e-mail breakdown last August.