Gmail Outage: Worldwide Reports of Hours-long Service Disruption

By Areeba Asad On Aug 20, 2020

PARIS, FRANCE - JULY 04: In this photo illustration, the logo of the Gmail app homepage is seen on the screen of an iPhone in front of a computer screen showing a Google logo on July 04, 2018 in Paris, France. According to the Wall Street Journal dozens of Google partner companies have access to emails from 1.5 billion Gmail users. Gmail is a free email service offered by Google. (Photo Illustration by Chesnot/Getty Images)

A growing number of people around the world are reporting service disruptions to a number of Google services including Gmail and Google Drive.

A widespread outage of the popular Google services began shortly after 12 a.m. ET on Thursday. People reported issues from the US, Europe and parts of Asia including Pakistan, India, Japan, Singapore and Australia, according to DownDetector. Gmail users said they had trouble attaching files and were unable to send and receive emails. Some even faced problems logging in.

Google’s app status page indicated that Google Meet, Google Docs, Google Keep and Google Voice are also facing service disruptions.

Google’s app status page shows services that have been affected by a widespread outage.

Screenshot by Sareena Dayaram/CNET

Google says it’s “continuing to investigate this issue” and will provide an update by 4:09 a.m. ET detailing when it expects to resolve the problem.

Google Update

Google’s status page has noted that they are continuing to investigate the issue. It has also been updated to indicate reports of problems with Google Meet, Google Voice, and Google Docs, while anecdotal reports show people are having issues uploading to YouTube as well.

These are the two statements Google has put out:

8/20/20, 1:29 AM: We’re investigating reports of an issue with Gmail. We will provide more information shortly.

8/20/20, 2:07 AM: We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by 8/20/20, 4:00 AM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.