According to Down Detector, over 2,000 users reported problems with their Gmail accounts as of 10:47 a.m. EST on Wednesday April 8. Issues began at 10:25 a.m. EDT. A map showed that most outage reports were coming from the New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania area and the Chicago area. Other cities that reported outings included: Miami, Tampa, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, Detroit, Boston, Washington D.C., Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. Some European cities have also reported outages including: London, Naples, Istanbul, Lisbon, and Barcelona.
Many users expressed problems sending and receiving messages from their Gmail accounts. The most common complaint was issues receiving messages, with 65 percent of users reporting this issue to Down Detector. Other issues reported including logging-in, which 27 percent of users reported, and six percent of users reported issues with the website.
According to the G Suite status dashboard, Google shared at 11:04 a.m. EST that the company was investigating a “service disruption.”
“We’re investigating reports of an issue with Gmail,” the update read. “We will provide more information shortly.”
The Gmail Twitter account began responding to users reporting down issues, writing that they were working to correct the issue.
Google did not immediately respond to Newsweek’s emailed request for comment.
Despite many users reporting that Gmail is down, I had no issue with my work email, which is hosted by Gmail, or my personal Gmail accounts. I received emails as recently as 11:43 a.m. EST and a relative that I sent out an email to an external account received both emails.
The hashtag #Gmaildown trended with many users writing about their technical woes. Some people joked that the Gmail staff may not actually be working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic, thus causing the large number of issues that users experienced with their accounts. Others wondered if maybe the system was just overloaded by the sheer volume of people using the service now that most people are working from home.
One user even expressed frustration about the timing of the outage. “It figures that the day I choose to work from home gmail goes down,” she tweeted.
Other people simply detailed their issues including receiving error pages that say the page is not on the server and others saying their emails are bouncing back.
Don’t fret if you use other Google services. Services like Hangouts, Calendar, and Drive appear to be working just fine.
