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Google hit by widespread outages

December 14, 2020

Google users in several world regions were briefly unable to use several internet services on Monday. The outage came as many are relying on the internet for work and education amid the pandemic.

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Google logo
An outage at Google can affect millions of usersImage: picture alliance / Geisler-Fotopress

Services offered by global tech giant Google were briefly disrupted on Monday, preventing users in Europe, India, the US and other parts of the world from accessing emails, YouTube videos and documents.

Google's parent company, Alphabet, said the problem was remedied in an hour in most cases. It did not say how many users were affected.

The interruption came as many people across the world are using Google services for work or study purposes from home because of restrictions imposed to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

Boy sitting at desk with computer and school books
Many school pupils around are currently relying on the internet, including Google services, for instruction Image: picture-alliance/Fotostand/Voelker

Among the services affected were the email service Gmail, the cloud platform Google Drive and the video platform YouTube, which is used by more than 2 billion people each month.

The site Downdectector, which tracks internet outages, said the disruption particularly affected users in Britain and other parts of Europe, and the northeastern US. Japan, Malaysia and India were also hit badly.

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tj/rc (AP, Reuters)