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Gmail experiencing disruption globally, Google confirms

Gmail not working properly? You’re not the only one.

Google’s web-based email service is experiencing issues, with users around the world affected. The problems appear to have started at around 2 p.m. PT on Tuesday, December 15.

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The Mountain View, California, company confirmed the issue on a “service details” page for Gmail, saying that it hopes to have the issue resolved by 4 p.m. PT, though it added that this time frame could change.

“We’re aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a significant subset of users,” Google said. “The affected users are able to access Gmail, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior.”

Data from Downdetector, which tracks online outages and disruptions, showed that Gmail users in the U.S. appeared to be affected the worst, with people in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and parts of Europe also hit.

Google revealed last year that its email service has 1.5 billion active users globally.

The disruption comes less than 24 hours after another major outage that affected various Google services, including Gmail, Docs, and YouTube. Google later confirmed that the issue was linked to its authentication system, which is used for logging in and other similar operations.

In a troublesome end to the year for Google, today’s problem also comes exactly two months after YouTube, which Google owns, suffered a major outage when its website and apps became hard to access.

Looking for a new email client? Digital Trends has you covered.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
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