Google applications including YouTube, email and Docs are suffering a rare service outage, with users unable to access many of the company's services, BBC News reported today.

The outage started shortly before noon UK time, with Google sites returning server errors when visited.

Users around the world reported problems with Gmail, Google Drive, the Android Play Store, Maps, and more.

Google's search engine, however, remained unaffected by the problems affecting its other services.

Despite the widespread outage, Google's service dashboard initially showed no errors - before switching to red status across all services.

Many individuals and businesses rely on Google services for basic work apps such as email and calendars.

Users of Google Docs could continue to work if they had synced documents offline, but were unable to use any online features.

"We're aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a majority of users. The affected users are unable to access Gmail," a statement said, with the word "Gmail" replaced by other services.

Google has been contacted for comment, but one spokesperson said they were unable to access their email.

According to Indian Express, Google services including Gmail, YouTube and Docs face global outage, appear to be back now

Google’s services appear to be down right now. According to the website, downdetector, users appear to be face problems with Google services such as Gmail, YouTube and Google Docs appear to be down. Users also took to Twitter to complain about the issues. Google’s Workspace Status Dashboard is now showing an outage. All services appear to show an outage. The company has not yet issued a statement on what can only be termed as the great Google blackout of 2020, though we have reached out to them for a comment.

When Google’s services go down, billion of users are impacted. That’s because Gmail, YouTube have more than a billion users on a monthly basis. The issue appears to be a worldwide problem and even users in India are reporting a problem. Some users reported seeing a 503 error when they tried to login to their Gmail account. Others are seeing a 500 error when they try to login.

When we tried opening YouTube, it says ‘Something went wrong’ and a picture of a monkey holding a wrench. Some people are also being kicked out of their ongoing Google Meet sessions and others were unable to join scheduled calls. Google Meet is the video-conferencing tool from the company.

Everything that requires a Google login is down. #GoogleDown https://t.co/Xn7UbW3PEg

— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) December 14, 2020

Me after YouTube, Google, Gmail Down:#YouTubeDOWN pic.twitter.com/fEX4zf5XXM

— Shahwaizwali (@Shahwaizwali1) December 14, 2020

Searching in google for why google is down*

Google#YouTubeDOWN pic.twitter.com/KlCHkknuco

— Shahwaizwali (@Shahwaizwali1) December 14, 2020

Okay so, currently @Google account services are down. If you wanna watch YT do it in incognito and don't login! Let's hope that @Google and @YouTube fix this issue! pic.twitter.com/I2jlcZQHYq

— Jadyn - Editing Commissions 🍥 (@___Jadyn___) December 14, 2020