Google applications including YouTube, Gmail and Docs suffer outage

Google services including YouTube, Gmail, Hangouts and Google Docs suffered a rare outage, with users unable to access services this morning.

The issue began affecting users across the country at around 11.30am this morning (Monday, December 14, 2020).

There were over 36,000 reports of problems with Google recorded by tracking website Downdetector at 11.56am today.

Many users trying to access Google Drive were directed to an error page saying: "500. That’s an error. There was an error. Please try again later. That’s all we know."

Other affected sites include Google Meet and the Play store.

The technology giant’s service status website confirmed the firm’s entire suite of apps had suffered an outage, but did not confirm what had caused the issue or a timeframe for when services would return online.

Google said it was “aware of the problem” and that it had left the “majority” of users unable to access its services.

Some of Google’s services are among the most widely used in the world – YouTube has more than two billion active users, while Gmail is the world’s most popular email platform with other 1.5 billion users.

Many took to social media to share their frustration with the outage, with the technology giant quickly trending on Twitter.

At around 12.36pm users began reporting that Google's applications had started functioning again.