Multiple Google services including Google Docs, Google Drive and Gmail suffered service disruptions for almost two hours last evening. According to the Google Apps status dashboard, Gmail started having issues at 6:28 PM and those issues were only resolved by 8:22 PM. Similarly, issues with Google Drive began cropping up at 6:31 PM and service was restored to normal by 8:15 in the evening, while for Google Docs, these issues lasted from 6:41 to 8:18 in the evening.
However, if you didn’t notice any issues then you are in the vast majority. Google reports that about 0.007% of the total Gmail user base was only able to access Gmail sporadically because of the problems, which means that a measly 30,000 users were affected out of the total Gmail user base of 425 million worldwide. Gmail didn’t provide numbers of affected users for Drive and Docs but it’s probably safe to assume that those numbers would also be quite low.
Once Google gave the green light to Gmail, it did release a statement apologizing for the disruption, “We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.” However, it didn’t give a reason for the service disruptions.
Other Google services hit during the same timeframe were Google Groups and the Google Admin control panel. While the former was hit by service disruptions, the latter suffered from complete outage for the better part of three hours.
Sources: Google Apps, CNET