Access to several of Google's most popular web services, including Gmail, Drive and the main administrative console was disrupted for around two hours Wednesday morning.
The first to go down, according to Google's Apps Status Dashboard, was the Admin control panel, which also provides API access to the company's web services. That functionality was still apparently down as of 11 a.m. Eastern Time, having first gone offline at 8:20 a.m.
[PAST GOOGLE OUTAGES: Gmail outage likely hit several million on Thursday]
Google Drive - which includes Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Presentations - began to experience disruptions at around 9 a.m., though the problem is listed as resolved as of just before 11 a.m. Gmail ran into trouble around the same time, and the dashboard says that that the issue was fixed slightly after the Drive problems.
Google's press team told Network World that the company is currently looking into the root causes of the service disruptions, and will post additional information when the investigations have been completed.
Social media posts and comments on Reddit and Hacker News seem to indicate that both business users and consumers in locations around the globe were affected. Googles dashboard characterized the problems with Gmail and Drive as disruptions, rather than complete outages.
This isnt the first large-scale outage for Googles services in recent weeks Google Drive suffered three separate disruptions during the week of March 18-22, including three hours on Monday, two more on Tuesday and a hefty 12 hours on Thursday.
Gmail, as well, has had high-profile misfires of late, though they have been comparatively less common. That service went down for about an hour on Dec. 10, 2012, provoking widespread grumbles among the user base.
Email Jon Gold at jgold@nww.com and follow him on Twitter at @NWWJonGold.
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