Google Apologises to Users After Restoring Gmail, Drive, Meet and Other Apps [UPDATED]

Update 5: After the day-long drama, Google has updated via the G Suite dashboard that all Gmail services have been completely restored. However, the company has intriguingly left out any mention of all the other services that were affected, including Google Meet, Keep, Chat, Sites and Google Drive. Given how popular Google's tools are among both personal and enterprise users, it remains to be seen if reports of inconsistencies in Google's services continue in the immediate future as well. Google still offered no disclosure of what caused the outage. In a cursory statement, the company issued a formal apology for the day-long outage all through a working day. Its statement said, "We thank you for your patience and continued support. System reliability is a top priority at Google. We are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."

Update 4: Google's latest update has stated that the essential email client Gmail has been restored for "some" users. However, it has not revealed details for what caused the glitches. The final statement offered by Google says, "Gmail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change." As a result, you may expect intermittent issues to persist with some of Google's services, including popular tools such as Google Drive, Meet and Keep. A further statement is expected for when Google finally manages to fix all issues with its tools.

Update 3: Still no update from Google on the details of the issue, and what may have caused the outage, as we reach Google's latest deadline of a fix by 3:08PM. According to the G Suite User Dashboard, Google says that the list of affected service include the ability to add new pages via Google Sites, as well as "issues" with Google's Voice Mail and Keep notes/reminder service.

Update 2: Google has further delayed the timeline of resolution, now stating that more details on the Gmail outage will be revealed at 1:51PM. Google has also confirmed that the issues have affected the ability to send emails via Gmail, recording video conferences on Meet, creating/uploading new files on Drive, managing user uploads on G Suite admin console (for enterprise users), and also posting messages on Google Chat.

Google has confirmed that Gmail and Drive are not available to a lot of users around the world at this time. You may have already noticed issues with either logging into Gmail or even if you could, you will likely not be able to send emails and attachments. Google has confirmed that this is not a minor bug, updating through the G Suite status dashboard that Gmail and Drive services for Google, which also include Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and the entire work suite, are facing an outage at the moment. It is not clear right now if Google Meet, the video conferencing platform, is also facing the same set of issues that may have brought the other services down. Google has also confirmed that it is currently investigating the reason why Gmail and Drive services are down, and is expected to provide clarity on the matter soon.

This is the second time in the space of a few weeks that Gmail has suffered an outage. In July, many users were unable to log into Gmail for a short while — an issue subsequently fixed. However, Google did not offer any disclosure on why might the outage have happened. At this time, Gmail and Google Drive outage is impacting users in India as well as across Europe, Asia and the USA. Popular services facing down time has become a seemingly frequent affair, with bulk loads of memes being the centrepiece of attention every time a service goes down. At the centre of this is Facebook's tools, which have faced frequent outages in the recent past. WhatsApp's servers recently faced an outage that barred users from sending messages or accessing files on WhatsApp, leading to people flocking to Twitter to share reactions on the matter.

However, with the Gmail and Drive outage occurring in the middle of a weekday in India, it may be presumed that the downtime may have affected work for many – especially since we have largely been working from home. Google's G Suite is one of the most popular productivity suites, and is used by a wide range of organisations across India and the world. At the time of writing, News18 can confirm that the services have started sporadically working in India, with Gmail's incoming and outgoing email services, as well as full Google Drive functionality, being operational as of now for some in our team. It is possible that the issues did not affect all users of Gmail and Google Drive, or may be in process of being restored at the moment.

Update 1: Google has shared another update which says the issue is still not resolved and investigations continue. "We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by 8/20/20, 1:39 PM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem," they say. Earlier, in the first update at 10:59am this morning, Google said, “We're investigating reports of an issue with Gmail. We will provide more information shortly.” The issues persist and as of 11:37am when Google last shared an update, they said, “We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by 8/20/20, 1:30 PM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.” This may just be a good time to ignore your emails and go grab a coffee instead.