Google Calendar Was Down for Several Hours in Global Outage

Google Calendar is back online after service was disrupted for several hours.

Users worldwide reported finding an error message when they tried to access the app Tuesday morning, and some turned to social media to share their dismay and overwhelming feeling that maybe they should go home for the day.

"The problem with Google Calendar and Hangouts Meet should be resolved," Google said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. "We apologise 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's outage, which disrupted people's ability to review appointments and set meetings, generated thousands of complaints. The reports were concentrated in key markets for Google, including the United States and Western Europe, according to the website Downdetector, which tracks service outages.

Google Calendar's Twitter account was peppered with people posting screen shots of the error message and asking why the service was down. In dozens of replies that seemed to never end after continued mouse scrolls, Google tweeted back: "Our team is aware of this issue and working on a fix. Appreciate your patience."

But at 1:13pm, Google issued a service update on its Web page, indicating that the outage had been resolved. The initial disruption was first reported nearly three hours earlier, at 10:22 am.

© The Washington Post 2019