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 theGoogle 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.”

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. 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.