Google

Gmail and Google Drive are back up after an hours-long outage affecting people around the world.

"The problem with Gmail should be resolved," reads a message posted at 11:13 p.m. PT Tuesday on Google's GSuite Status Dashboard. "We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."

Google had a similar status message for Google Drive, posted at the same time.

Gmail users flooded social media on Tuesday evening to complain about problems sending emails. Some also reported issues with Google Drive, including spotty performance and certain file types not opening.

According to an initial message posted on Google's GSuite Status Dashboard at 7:53 p.m. PT Tuesday, both Gmail and Google Drive were experiencing what it described as a "service disruption."

So what do you do when you're email isn't working? Send out a tweet!

Google confirmed the outage to CNET. It was widespread and appeared to cover North and South America, Europe and Asia, though not all users we impacted. (Gmail was working for CNET staff in New York and Australia but not for one of our reporters in San Francisco.)

Either way, you might have an excuse for not already having sent that annoying email reply.

First published, March 12 at 8:12 p.m. PT.

Update, 9:20 p.m. PT: Adds update from Google.

Correction, March 13 at 5:30 a.m. PT: Fixes the time of Google's initial notification of the outage.

Update, March 13 at 5:59 a.m. PT: Notes that the outage is over.