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Major Google outage denies access to millions, prompts flood of memes online

The Google logo is seen Jan. 8, 2020, at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP) (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)

(NEXSTAR) — Google services have been restored after the company experienced a major outage that left millions without access Monday morning, according to Downdetector.

Several Google services, including Google Classroom, YouTube, Gmail, Google Suite and Google Maps, began seeing problems around 6:30 a.m. ET.


Tens of thousands of complaints popped up along the East Coast of the U.S., with about 90% reporting they could not log in, according to Downdetector, which tracks website outages.

Forbes reported that many Google cloud services were brought down by an ongoing issue with the company’s servers.

The outage was acknowledged on Google’s status dashboard.

“The problem with Classroom should be resolved for the vast majority of affected users. We will continue to work towards restoring service for the remaining affected users, but no further updates will be provided on the Google Workspace Status Dashboard. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better,” the company said in a post at 7:52 a.m. ET.

It appears that the outage was worldwide, according to Downdetector data, but looked to be especially widespread in the northeastern U.S., Britain and other parts of Europe. Japan, Malaysia and India also appeared to be more affected.

The Google outage prompted a swift flood of memes on social media. Here are a few:

The Associated Press contributed to this report.