Millions of consumers were unable to access Google this morning. The outage was not limited to its search engine, but also services such as Gmail, Google Drive, and YouTube.
Many thousands of users have reported issues accessing Google services, including Gmail, Google Drive, and even YouTube. According to Downdetector, users began reporting issues across Google services around 6:56 a.m. EST. The problems seemed to affect users throughout the United States and Europe, although the problems could potentially be worldwide.
When attempting to access Gmail, users are met with a message stating: “Oops…the system encountered a problem – retrying.” When accessing YouTube, a cartoon monkey is displayed with a message reading: “Something went wrong…”
Some users reported that when they attempted to use Google’s search engine they received an error stating: “The server cannot process the request because it is malformed. It should not be retried.”
54 percent of YouTube users stated that they were unable to access the website while 42 percent could access the website but view videos. Three percent reported issues logging in to YouTube. 75 percent of Gmail users reported that they were unable to log-in, 15 percent could not access the website at all and eight percent were not receiving messages to their email account.
“Google and YouTube” began trending across Twitter as users expressed their frustration with the issues:
The day came. When you can’t even google what happened with google.
It’s still 2020.#googledown pic.twitter.com/MHS6Yd8IMm
— Asta (@antiMagicGuy) December 14, 2020
.@madebygoogle @Google Google Home is down. I have no control over my smart devices. My home is all nest and google and it's all down. No lights, wifi, cameras, etc. This is not convenient.
— C S C (@cliveson14) December 14, 2020
The term “incognito” also began trending on Twitter as many users reported being able to access YouTube in Google Chrome’s incognito browsing mode.
As of the time of the writing of this article, users have begun reporting that Google services are operational once again, Google has yet to comment on the situation.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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