Finally! After almost 4 days and 7 help requests i got a reply from Google:
Hello,
Thanks for bringing this issue to our attention. We have forwarded the information you provided to the appropriate team for further investigation. We appreciate your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Sincerely,
The Google Team
Although it is kind of a progress, it is still far from providing any solution.
In the meantime i learned that i am not alone in this 502 boat.
Yes, it’s been over 60 hours that i started getting this annoying 502 error from Google. The six reports via their help system haven’t produced any response from the sleeping giant. I am not sure i would buy a stock of a company with such consumer service.
And this is annoying. Not simply annoying, but i am sure also harming my work. A lesson should be learned in terms of using third party services, especially those offered for free. At this point, as i am channeling all work related correspondence to the university address, i am really open for suggestions for Google alternatives for a private email account.
Thank you Leonichka for the comment, it definitely helps to clarify my point.
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I notice that many people are hitting this entry. Unfortunately, there is no solution here and I don’t think that Google has one either. All you can do is wait and bombard Google with requests for help. If interested, you can read my update messages and see how long it took me to get it resolved (there is a link in the upper right corner and the answer is over 6 days).
I relate to your pain, but the only advice i can give is be patient.
Just wanted to share a couple of observations from my recent travels in the US.
First, riding a bus on East coast gives you an impression of road being the contemporary rivers. It is really amazing how everywhere you go there are those long roads with an ocean of green surrounding them. And every now and then you have those rest areas, and new ones are getting built. I think this is what the rivers looked like in the past, when they were the main transportation routs. There is no particular point in this paragraph, just an observation 
The second observation is about the Penn Station and the weird way they are managing the schedule there. I just don’t grasp it. Here we go…. You buy a ticket to go to point B. The train that takes you there is going from point A to point C. When you buy the ticket they don’t tell you that you are taking the train from point A to point C. They also don’t tell you which platform the train is coming to. All you get is the time of your train. Now you have to wait and about 5 minutes before the departure time they show you what platform you train is leaving from. And i am asking why?!?!
It seems like i am facing (hopefully) a promo of my dark googalization prophecy. My gmail account is down for already over 24 hours and i have to admit it is very annoying (especially since i started hearing about emails sent to me that are bouncing back). I contacted Google support already twice about the issue, but am keep on getting an annoying 502 error saying: “We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is currently experiencing errors (...) Please try logging in to your account again in a few minutes.”
This made me thinking(again) about the problematics of putting all the communication eggs in one g-basket. Although this time it is only the email service that is not functioning, but what about a scenario where other services linked to the same account stop working? When all our online communication practices are channeled through a single route, what is the potential damage of glitches in that route? Google are trying to make us keep our documents with them, our calendars with them, our pictures with them, our notes, and more… but here i am experiencing a (hopefully) rather minor technical glitch, and that makes me thinking again about yet another downside of googalization.
This is me being frustrated with gmail.
I am trying to get back on the blogging track and unfortunately the first post is about Skype being down today. It is so down that even the link to blogs that discuss it doesn’t work. Something is wrong in the VoIP kingdom.
For me this is yet another example of how we rely on technology and to a degree depend on it. I had to make an international call this morning and i couldn’t really do it because i rely on Skype as my primary communication tool. After all it is always there, and the infrastructure/technology it is using are pretty much transparent to user in a sense that I do not think about them while utilizing them. And suddenly it is not there and I am stuck.
I wonder what would happen when Gmail or Yahoo mail would glitch even if for a few hours…