Google services remain suspended for over two hours

LAHORE: Google services including Gmail and YouTube witnessed outages in Pakistan, like in other parts of the world, rendering thousands of users unable to access their accounts on Monday.

The disruption started at around 4:30 (PST) and continued for over two hours. The outage especially adversely affected students and teachers, who use Google classroom and Google meet platforms. Working of businesses was also affected. Initially, Google denied any problems with its services. However, later it confirmed that outage was affecting the Google products and its users.

A statement issued by Google stated, “We are aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a majority of users. The affected users are unable to access Gmail.” However, the Goggle did not share anything on the social media channel about outages.

Geo News said, “Google’s services – YouTube, Google Meet, Hangouts, Google Maps, Google Calendar, the chatty AI, Google Sheets, and Gmail – are now accessible to users. The services faced an outage for nearly an-hour-and-a-half and remained inaccessible to users. However, Google said they have been restored.”

A message on the Google Workspace Status Dashboard said: “We will continue to work towards restoring service for the remaining affected users [...] Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.

“We’re sorry, but your account is temporarily unavailable. We apologise for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes. You can view the G Suite Status Dashboard for the current status of the service,” the message read when it was down.

In Pakistan, people thought the government halted the Google services through Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). An official of the PTA confirmed that they received calls from the media and other quarters concerned about non-accessibility of the Google services, especially YouTube. The people were curious about any action by the government on these internet services. However, once it was cleared that it was a global issue, people stopped approaching the PTA,” he added.

Google’s search engine remained unaffected during widespread outage of its services. The mystery of why Google services were down is yet to be disclosed.