Gmail, Drive and other Google services suffer international outage

Gmail and YouTube icons on a smartphone screen

A worldwide outage caused Google users to report issues with Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps and Hangouts over the course of several hours.

People in Europe, the US, Australia and Asia were affected by the outage.

According to Google's service website, some of its one billion plus users had difficulty accessing and/or attaching files. For Gmail, this meant users had trouble sending emails and saving drafts as well as accessing attachments.

When users tried to send an email, "Message could not be sent. Check your network and try again" popped up on their screens.

In Drive, files did not upload or download, and in Hangouts users had difficulty uploading photos or attachments.

Google Maps also seemed to be having issues, though this was not officially confirmed by Google. Users reported seeing a black screen instead of an image when they tried to access Street View mode.

Issue reports regarding Gmail spiked around 2am GMT. In a statement on its service website, Google said: "We're investigating reports of an issue with Gmail. We will provide more information shortly. The affected users are able to access Gmail, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behaviour."

As of 6:30am GMT, Google said the problem had been resolved. It did not state the cause of the problem, though it is likely that the crux of the problem is being investigated by Google's engineers.

"The problem with Google Drive should be resolved. We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support," Google said.