Google, YouTube and Gmail are all DOWN for thousands of users due to mysterious outage
GOOGLE has experienced a brief outage that caused disruption to several other services, such as YouTube, Gmail and Google Meet.
It's understood that Virgin Media and BT internet users have also been affected.
Outage site Downdetector has registered thousands of reports for issues with YouTube and Google.
Affected services are largely back online, though some users are still experiencing issues.
People have flocked to social media to see whether others were having problems with accessing Google services.
"I just tried to Google [whether] Google is down," one user wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Another added: "#Google is down, is it you #CrowdStrike again?"
While a third person tweeted: "Is YouTube down? [Because] I've been refreshing so many times and wondering why Twitter loads so fast but not YouTube."
YouTube is owned by Google, and has therefore been swept up in the disruption alongside Workspace services like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Meet and more.
With YouTube, out of action for many, viewers have joked that they may have to focus on work instead.
"YoutTube is down. Great, now I have to actually do work," one person wrote.
Google Workspace, which includes dozens of apps, appears to be running as usual, according to the company's server status site.
Microsoft's mega-outage
Although mentioned by one onlooker, the outage is unrelated to the CrowdStrike update that brought down most of Microsoft's services in July.
The outage, on 19 July, affected hundreds of services on an unprecedented scale.
It grounded flights, disrupted emergency services, halted hospital appointments, newsrooms, television networks and businesses worldwide.
The so-called Microsoft meltdown, which lasted about 20 hours, is reported to have cost the economy an estimated $24billion - or £18billion.
One expert told The Sun it was the closest the world has ever come to the long-fabled "digital apocalypse".