Gmail, YouTube, Google down! Services restored after glitch in the UK

Google suffered a massive setback today after its various sites were reported as being down in the United Kingdom. Reports on Downdetector showed that a major event had occurred at Gmail with thousands reporting problems. Reports about YouTube being down too were received but these numbered in the hundreds, unlike Gmail. Reports received by Downdetector about Gmail exceeded 2600 while YouTube reports were measured at 349.

Downdetector says that it reports an 'incident' when glitch reports about any site on its portal exceeds the typical volume for that time of day. The problem faced by Gmail was not just on the website but also on the app. Server connection error was reported by 54 per cent of the Gmail users, mail sending glitches were reported by 31 per cent of the people and 15 per cent reported a problem with the Google website itself.

A Gmail user named James, posted this message on Downdetector, "Keep getting 502 server error on gmail". Another user, Chris King, said, "Works in Gmail web, but unable to send and receive reliably via mail client (dropped connections)."

Among the reports received regarding YouTube, as many as 49 per cent said they are facing issues on website, 38 per cent were facing an issue with the app and 13 per cent faced glitches with video streaming.  

However, the sites are all back now. The Downdetector message now reads, “User reports indicate no current problems at Youtube.” In its reaction to Express of UK, Google said, "On Friday November 12 around 08:30 am UTC, some of our users experienced a service disruption to Google Cloud services, including Google Workspace. This issue is now resolved."

As is clear from the Google Workspace Status Report, the problem was quite widespread with Google Chat, Google Meet, Google Calendar and Google Groups being affected too. Check the report here. 

Google is not the only one suffering glitches. Facebook owned companies suffered a major outage recently that lasted over 5 hours. 

The outage was global and it affected WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and more. After services were restored, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had apologised for the inconvenience caused to users. 

However, the sites had crashed for a second time thereafter, but services were quickly restored. 

The situation was so bad that employees reportedly, could not even get back into the office to deal with the problem.