Gmail BACK after mystery ‘Error 404’ took Google emails offline for thousands
The strange outage started on Tuesday morning
GOOGLE'S hugely popular Gmail service stopped working for users across the globe today.
Thousands of complaints turned up online about a mysterious "Error 404" message preventing users from accessing their emails.
Gmail down – who is affected?
Outage tracker Down Detector started logging thousands of reports at about 11am UK time on Tuesday morning.
The vast majority of users complained about log-in issues, as well as difficulty receiving email messages and accessing the Gmail website.
A live outage map suggested the UK was a particular hot-spot for the outage – although most of the USA was still asleep.
Google's service status page listed no issues with Gmail at the time, but users clearly disagree.
Gmail down – why is Gmail not working?
Users on Twitter and Down Detector reported seeing 'Error 404' messages when they tried to access Gmail.
The issue appeared to affect UK users in particular – one Twitter poster based in Yorkshire wrote: "There's definitely a problem. Hope it will be sorted soon as I need to use email."
Another user said: "Unable to log onto gmail??? APOCALYPSE!!!!!"
Reports also came in from Europe, the USA, India and South East Asia.
An 'Error 404' is a standard error in internet communications.
It means that your request has reached the correct server, but that the server couldn't find what you're looking for.
Given that Gmail is a major service, this was likely some kind of server gaffe – but it's impossible to know for sure.
The issue didn't affect all servers, however – we were able to access Gmail at The Sun's London HQ.
Gmail – a brief history
Here's what you need to know...
- Gmail is a free email service that's owned and operated by Google
- It first launched as part of a "beta" test in April 2004, and became a fully-fledged service in July 2009
- It's available in 105 languages around the world, and is one of the most popular email services
- In February 2016, Gmail had around 1billion active users
- And by April 2018, the number of total users had grown to 1.4billion
- It was also the first app on the Google Play Store to hit 1billion installations in total on Android phones and tablets
- Gmail is integrated with lots of other services, including Google Drive and Google Photos – all three of which share storage space
- The service has useful features, like scanning emails for spam and viruses
- It's also extremely popular with businesses – a 2014 estimate suggested 92% of US start-ups were using Gmail
We've asked Google for comment and will update this story with any response.
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Have you experienced any issues with Gmail? Let us know in the comments!
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