Google tells Gmail users You Should never Expect privacy
Google's popular email service experienced a widespread outage affecting its Google for Work Gmail users on 14 September Reuters

Google's popular email service Gmail suffered a widespread outage on 14 September affecting millions of corporate users without access to their accounts. The interruption, which seemed to be limited to Google for Work Gmail users, apparently hit people in the US and the UK the hardest.

The tech giant posted a series of updates saying it was investigating the issue and working on a fix.

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"We're investigating reports of an issue with Gmail," the company said in an update on its App status page at 4:16 pm BST (11:16 ET). "We will provide more information shortly. Based on reports, it affects only Google for Work Gmail users. The users are redirected to a page with 'Service not available, contact your administrator."

Seemingly caused by a technical glitch, the outage is a major one for the company that promises its Google Apps Covered Services web interface "will be operational and available" to its customers at least 99.9% of the time during any calendar month.

Google later said that it had "identified the root cause of the issue and a potential fix is being implemented". However, it noted that its Gmail service has been resolved for some users, but not everyone.

Numerous frustrated users took to social media to voice their complaints as well as post hilarious opinions about the outage, reporting that that they were unable to connect to the service, send or receive emails, load the login portal or access Gchat conversations.

The California-based company posted a workaround for the issue, recommending that users "Disable Gmail Service in Admin Console UI, save the changes, enable it, save the changes."

According to the Down Detector website, 75% of users reported log-in issues on 14 September while 17% said they were unable to receive messages. About 7% reported issues accessing the website.

At the time of publication, Google's app status dashboard stated: "Gmail service has been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. Delivery of messages sent to affected users during the issue may be delayed."

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