In what can surely be termed as strange or odd service disruption, users of two of the biggest technology companies faced outage almost at the same time on March 5. Many users of Google-owned apps like Gmail and YouTube as well as Meta-owned social networks Facebook, Instagram and Threads faced outage in services.
Late evening, some users reported issues with Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and other Meta services.While Facebook users were greeted with error messages or their account logged out and unable to log back in; Instagram users could not refresh their Feeds. Meta acknowledged the issue in an official post.
As Facebook and Instagram services limped back to normalcy, some Google apps’ users reported similar issues. Disruption in Google apps like Gmail and YouTube started around 9 PM IST, as per the internet traffic outage tracker platform Down Detector. Users complained that they have been logged out of their Gmail and YouTube accounts. Some Gmail users also reported not being able to send emails. However, comparatively there were far fewer reports of Gmail and YouTube services being down than that of Meta platforms. Also, most reports related to Google apps started to subside around 11 pm (IST).
What Google said on the outage
Google confirmed the service disruption. Team YouTube in a post on X said: “Thanks to everyone who sent notes about loading issues with YouTube: we’re on it!”. On the Google Workspace Status Dashboard, Google confirmed an ongoing issue with Gmail. The company said that errors and delays are currently more common among Gmail users.
Some Gmail users are experiencing elevated error rates while performing various actions and may also see delays in email delivery.
Issue resolved status update
Google too confirmed that Gmail is back in order, claiming that a “surge in traffic” was to blame for issues. “We saw a surge in traffic starting around 7:25 AM Pacific Time on March 5, and we scaled up our systems to serve the additional load,” said the company on its status page.