Google Docs and Google Drive Were Hit With Broad Disruption, ‘Unexpected Behavior’

UPDATED: Many users trying to access several Google productivity applications — including Google Docs and Google Drive — encountered serious technical problems Monday morning.

Google said the issues were resolved by 12:20 p.m. ET, more than three hours after people first began reporting various issues with the services. According to the internet giant’s status page, Google Sheets, Google Slides and Google Classroom also experienced partial service outages that were restored in the same timeframe.

According to Google’s App Status Dashboard, users affected by the technical problems were able to access Google Docs, Google Drive and the other applications “but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior.” The company recommended that users try reloading the page, “or coming back to it in a few minutes.”

An earlier message on the site about Google Docs, shared at 9:36 a.m. ET, said, “We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Docs. We will provide more information shortly. The affected users are able to access Google Docs, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior.” In addition, the message said, “Affected user are unable to create new documents.”

Google support teams had posted multiple replies to users on Twitter complaining about the problems, saying, “We are aware of a service disruption and are working right now to resolve it. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.”

According to uptime-monitoring site DownDetector.com, user reports of problems with Google Drive began to spike just before 9 a.m. ET Monday. According to the site, 92% of the issues reported were related to “App not loading.”

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