Google says Gmail outage resolved

WASHINGTON: Google on Wednesday said it had fixed a problem that caused its email service Gmail to suffer a widespread outage which the Internet giant said affected a "majority" of its users.

Google's App Status Dashboard, a website which tracks the performance of its various Web-based services, reported at 0083IST that the problem was "affecting a majority of users."

"The affected users are unable to access Google Mail," it said. More than an hour-and-a-half later, at 00267IST, Google said the outage was over. "The problem with Google Mail should be resolved," it said. "We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support."

Google's last major technical problem occurred in May, leaving millions ofpeople unable to use popular services such as its main search page, as well as Gmail and Google News.

The hour-long outage affected Web surfers not only in the United States but in other countries and numerous other services including Google Reader, Google Maps, Google Analytics and video-sharing site YouTube.

Google also experienced a breakdown in February of Gmail, leaving millions of people worldwide without access to the free Web-based email service for a few hours.