Google sites including YouTube, Docs and Gmail down for thousands of users

Applications that form part of the Google suite, including YouTube, Gmail and Docs, were reported to be inaccessible for over half an hour on Monday.

The rare crash, which also included the Maps, Hangouts, and Google Drive apps among others, started at around 10.30 am CET, according to indicators on the outage-monitoring website Downtime.

Service users around the world reported they had been notified of server errors when they visited the services.

The company's search engine and web browser Google Chrome appeared to be functioning normally, unaffected by the problems that had crashed the apps.

The glitch marked an unprecedented failure for Google, whose system is one of the internet's largest traffic drivers, used by many businesses and individuals alike.

Services were offline for under an hour.

Google's service dashboard did not initially report any issues, but later changed the status of some apps to red, signalling a "service outage".

"We're aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a majority of users. The affected users are unable to access Gmail," it said, replacing the word "Gmail" with other products.

The service outage came the day before the European Commission was set to present its Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The set of draft legislation that, if adopted, will have a major impact on the business practices of digital service providers in the EU, as well as those based outside Europe serving users in the bloc, including Google and other Big Tech like Facebook.

Euronews has contacted Google to ask about the outage but had not received a response at the time of publication.