Google Drive, Docs Hit With Partial Outage

Some users saw issues such as high latency and error messages during the partial outage, which lasted about three hours, Google reported.

Google Drive and cloud-based apps such as Google Docs experienced a partial outage for about three hours on Monday, leading to high latency and other issues for some users, the company reported.

The Google Drive cloud storage service—and associated cloud apps including Google Docs and Google Sheets—suffered multiple service issues during the partial outage Monday morning, Eastern Time, Google said.

[Related: More Google Woes: Gmail Issues Strike ‘Significant Subset’ Of Users]

Google reported that the partial Google Drive outage was resolved as of 12:20 p.m., Eastern Time.

“We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support,” the company said on its Google Drive service details page.

Other Google services were not affected, including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Meet, according to the company.

Google initially disclosed the partial outage at 9:36 a.m., Eastern Time. While users could still access Google Drive, affected users could not create new documents and were “seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior,” the company said on its Google Drive service details page.

In response to a request for comment from CRN, Google said the issues related to “creating new and copying existing Google Docs, Slides and Sheets within Google Workspace and Google Workspace for Education accounts.”

At Los Angeles-based SADA Systems, a major Google solution provider partner, the issues “impacted a very small portion of customers,” said John Campbell, vice president of customer experience and innovation at SADA, in an email to CRN.

“Outages happen and might cause a slowdown from time to time but generally speaking, they are addressed quickly with minimal disruption,” Campbell said. “When issues do arise, clients should work with their partner to confirm the issue they’re experiencing is related to an outage. Partners like SADA can help by ensuring that a client’s Google Workspace administrator alerts are enabled so admins can receive important notifications promptly.”

The partial Google Drive outage follows a series of issues related to Google’s cloud platforms in December.

On Dec. 14, Google had experienced an outage for all of its Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) services—while the following day, Google suffered a disruption for its Gmail service.

Wade Tyler Millward contributed to this report.