Major Google outage takes down Gmail, Drive, YouTube and more

Google is currently suffering a major outage that has taken key services including Gmail, Google Docs and YouTube offline.

At the time of writing this article, Down Detector showed more than 16,000 reported cases from users having issues accessing Gmail, and over 5,000 reports of issues related to Google Drive and Docs. The website shows that widespread issues began at around 11.30am GMT.

Those attempting to access Gmail, for example, were being greeted with the message: "We’re sorry, but your account is temporarily unavailable. We apologise for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes. You can view the G Suite Status Dashboard for the current status of the service.”

The outage, which appears to be affecting Google's cloud-based services across the globe, has also taken down Assistant, Google Drive, Google Photos, Maps and the Google Play Store, according to reports on Twitter. It's believed that third-party apps and services that rely on Google’s back end services also appear to be affected.

Some users claimed they were able to access YouTube and other services by opening them in an Incognito window in Chrome. This suggests that the issue was related to Google's authorisation service, although the company has yet to confirm this.

Google has, however, acknowledged the extended downtime in a statement.

"We’re aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a majority of users," Google said. "The affected users are unable to access Gmail. We will provide an update detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change."

Since Google released its statement, most services including Gmail and YouTube have begun to return to normal.

"Gmail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future," Google added. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change."

This unprecedented disruption to Google services comes as numerous businesses and schools rely heavily on the cloud-based tools to facilitate working from home and remote learning.