Google, Gmail, Analytics & Sheets Down For Users Across The Globe

Google is down for users across the globe this morning. If you cannot access your Gmail account, Google Sheets, Google Analytics, or any other service provided by Google, this is the reason. According to Down Detector, reports of an outage started pouring just after 11 a.m. Eastern. The site’s Live Outage Map shows the majority of reports coming in from the United States, specifically in areas in the south, like Florida.

Additional services that appear to be impacted by this outage include YouTube, Google Voice, Spotify, and YouTubeTV.

For many people, using Google apps on a day-to-day basis is essential for business. As millions of people are currently home from works and kids are home from school as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, using Google and its functions have become a critical tool for home learning, communication, and more.

Among the Google properties affected are Hangouts and Google Classroom. Both assets became important pieces of the distance learning model, connecting students and educators, in the midst of school shutdowns. While it’s unknown if this increased usage of these and other Google products are responsible for the current outage, the downtime is obviously disrupting lessons and communication between teachers and pupils.

Google has yet to address the outage on social media. The company’s last tweet was posted about two hours before this article was published and was about working from home. The tweet included a link to an article, written by Executive Productivity Advisor Laura Mae Martin, and offered tips to people who are working from home. Ironically as it may be, Martin suggested using a few Google products — like Google Hangouts — which aren’t currently working for thousands of people.

Plenty of social media users have taken to Twitter and Facebook to vent about the outage.

“Google is down. This might actually be the apocalypse,” one Twitter user wrote.

“If #COVID2019 doesn’t cause us to lose it completely, @Google services going down will,” added another.

“Google broke, apparently,” echoed a third.

Thankfully, several people have already reported that things are back to normal, albeit a bit slow. Google Analytics, for example, is currently loading, though real-time numbers are still playing catch up. Many people have reported that they are able to access, send, and receive emails and Google Hangouts also seems to have recovered for many.

It is not uncommon for major platforms to experience an outage from time to time. Instagram and Facebook have both experienced outages over the past year, for example. Fortunately, these outages don’t last very long.

Editor’s note: A Google spokesperson reached out to The Inquisitr with a statement regarding the downtime.

“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. 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 congestion. For more details, please visit our status dashboard.”