Update: 7.55 a.m. ET: Google's status dashboard is now reporting all services are back online, so the trouble should have cleared up. Service may still be intermittent for some, but it shouldn't stay that way for long.
Update: 7.45 a.m. ET: Gmail, YouTube, Nest, and other services are slowly coming back online, but some users are still reporting issues.
Original story follows:
Every so often something on the internet breaks. Usually it's nothing of consequence, or it's down to a little too much traffic. Then something big happens and people flip out.
At the time of writing Google search is functioning just fine, so you can still go off and look up whatever it is you need to look up. But it seems like everything else Google does is now offline. Google Drive (and its associated apps), Maps, News, Play, YouTube, Google Assistant, even Google Keep can't connect to the servers to connect.
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Google search was functioning just fine, but it seems like everything else Google did was completely offline for about 40 minutes. Google Drive (and its associated apps), Maps, News, Play, YouTube, Google Assistant, even Google Keep couldn't connect to the servers to connect.
A test email sent from one Gmail account to another never arrived, and when attempting to log in Gmail we got a Temporary Error 500 message. Some service has since been restored, but we're still seeing an alert warning us that we can't access our contacts.
Of course, this issue showcases a potential overreliance on Google products in the age of remote working. Google offers a massively diverse array of products, many of which involve communicating over the internet. But a problem with Google's servers (if that's what this is) means all of its apps are useless.
The bigger problem is, of course, is that some critical functions are also down. Nest security is one, meaning any associated smart home gadgets are completely inoperable. Security cameras and thermostats are completely offline, though thankfully something more serious like the Nest Protect will still work without an internet connection -- it just won't function any differently to a regular smoke detector.
Other less obvious services, like Pokémon Go, were also affected, on account of it relying on Google Maps to generate its in-game content. Though users were completely unable to log in, rather than just not seeing any maps.
There's no doubt this outage will be sorted out very soon, though it does seem pretty bad when most of Google just flat out stops working. We'll bring you more once we find out what happened, and in the meantime you can check Down Detector or Google's own Status Dashboard to see how things are looking.
