Google confirms global Gmail outage, says everything now okay

Google has confirmed that its email client Gmail suffered downtime earlier today but says that the service is fully functional once again.

The disruption, which Google claims affected less than two percent of users worldwide, saw many unable to access their mail.

Naturally, this led some to vent their frustrations on Twitter although most saw the funny side:

Twitter is doing a better job of confirming that Gmail is down-ish than the Google App Status Dashbaord google.com/appsstatus

— chris busse (@busse) April 17, 2012

Gmail is down. I anticipate anarchy and cannibalism will shortly follow.

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) April 17, 2012

My Gmail is down. Yours probably is too, but I don’t care about yours.

— Ofay Da Juiceman (@blunted215) April 17, 2012

It’s sad that Gmail is down and now your parents can’t forward you that important conspiracy theory email about Obama’s birth certificate.

— Jenny Johnson (@JennyJohnsonHi5) April 17, 2012

Just over an hour after it first acknowledged the existence of the problem Google was reporting that the service had been completely restored.

The internet giant has not yet provided an explanation for what might have caused the outage. While the percentage of users affected was relatively small, it does appear to have been a worldwide phenomenon.