Given all these outages, this is probably the best time for my PSU to go up in smoke.
But as probably one of the biggest proponents of all of Valve's new initiatives (Steam Machines, Steam Controller, Linux, Streaming, etc), I think it is imperative for Valve to know (and presumably they do know) that none of that stuff matters if they don't start with a reliable service.
I know that Valve employees only work on things that interest them, but I sure hope that fixing these outages is interesting them because with such frequent outages, their value proposition over competitors like Origin takes a huge hit.
I find it hard to believe that gamers would flock to an EA-ran client, but if it works reliably (and that's generally the best people have to say about Origin), it is a far sight better than one that doesn't work reliably.