• by Ray Schultz , September 25, 2020

Gmail went out on Thursday night for about an hour as part of a general Google outage that also included YouTube, Google Drive and other services, according to media reports. 

Complaints peaked at downdetector between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., then quickly flattened out. 

Of the posts to downdetector, 55% were for log-in issues, 31% were for website problems and 12% were for inability to receive messages.  

The Northeastern U.S. was hardest hit, with some issues occurring to a lesser extent on the West Coast and Europe. It was not clear at deadline whether email marketing delivery and response were affected in those areas. 

Google said in a post that it was “aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a significant subset of its users,” according to The New York Times.

At around 10 a.m. ET on Friday, however, one Gmail user in Atlanta wrote, “I cannot connect to my Gmail account.” 

Another Gmail user wrote: “Gmail won’t load and I can’t view emails,” six hours prior to that.

The Times reports that “the disruptions raised anxiety among people already tense about technology’s role ahead of the Nov. 3 election,” as well as the heavy dependence on online services during the COVID-19 pandemic.