Google was hit with an outage on Thursday, apparently affecting Gmail service and YouTube.
The company says the issue was caused by a router failure in Atlanta. Service reportedly has
been restored, Google says.
“Some of our users experienced a service disruption today, as a result of a significant router failure in one of our data centers in the South Eastern US,
causing network congestion," a Google spokesperson says. "As a result, Google services running in that data center were directly impacted and were unavailable until our engineers rerouted the traffic
and moved those services to alternate facilities. Users in the South Eastern US may also have seen temporary difficulties in accessing a wider range of Google services due to the
network For more details, please visit our status dashboard (Link
to Status Dashboard).”
The problem peaked shortly after 11 a.m. EDT on the East Coast and other parts of the U.S. Of the complaints coming into
Downdetector, 71% involved log-in and 28% involved search.
Specific Gmail issues affected the same regions and also peaked around 11 a.m.
Of the Gmail-related complaints to
Downdetector, 56% were over log-in, 27% for website issues and 15% for an inability to receive messages.
One Gmail user writes: “Gmail login issues Dublin, Ireland.” Another says,
“Down in Nashville TN right now."
Android Police writes: "With many currently unable to access Gmail or Search, this outage could make a substantial dent on work-from-home
productivity."