Gmail, Google Docs face prolonged outage before being fixed

After nearly 12 hours of going head on with a problem that seemed to cause a service disruption in Gmail, Google has managed to fix the issue this morning. Besides the mail service, Google Docs was also struck by technical troubles acknowledged by Google.

The company updated its Apps Status Dashboard at around 7:30 AM IST today to inform users that the problem with Gmail had been fixed and the service ought to be working properly now. The outage started at around 8PM IST yesterday causing disruptions when users tried to send emails or open attachments.

Major outage for Gmail users

By midnight the disruption and delays in email had affected “less than 50 percent” of Gmail users, with the status of the issue changed from “disruption” to “outage” on the Apps Status Dashboard. The company admitted that it was taking a while to be solved since there was a backlog of deliveries it needed to complete.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

Finally, Google managed to return Gmail to a fully functioning status this morning. “We apologize for the duration of today’s event; we’re aware that prompt email delivery is an important part of the Gmail experience, and today’s experience fell far short of our standards,” Gmail wrote on the Dashboard.

According to the company’s analysis, 29.1 percent of messages received by Gmail users had been delayed during the outage. Google said that while the typical delay for receiving emails is just 2.6 seconds, emails during the outage were severely delayed. However, this did not seem to affect users’ access to the Gmail page or other functionality. Google Documents, on the other hand, seemed to face a slightly smaller problem, with the issue being fixed around 1:30AM IST.