google-logoThere are numerous reports floating round the Twittersphere and blogosphere of various Google sites either not loading at all or loading very slowly.

Sites including Google Reader, Analytics, Maps and Google Maps are showing dramatically slow loading times – if loading at all.

It appears to not just be Google’s own sites however but also sites with Google related services such as analytics, adsense, double click etc.

This is a breaking story, we’ll give you more updates as and when we hear it. For now, Yahoo can enjoy a bit of the search limelight.

Update 1:

Google has posted an update on the apps dashboard saying that they are aware of issues affecting a ‘small subset’ of GMail users – but say this may also be affecting other services as well.

Update 2:

Outages appear to be specific to the US (RWW have comments a plenty from US sufferers) and certain parts of Europe. UK and Middle East appear to be in the clear as well as most of the Far East. Australasia is still unconfirmed.

Update 3: According to Google’s official Twitter account, the issue has now been resolved.

Update 4: Google SVP of Operations Urs Hoelzle has posted the following explanation to the Official Google Blog:

This is your pilot speaking. Now, about that holding pattern…

Imagine if you were trying to fly from New York to San Francisco, but your plane was routed through an airport in Asia. And a bunch of other planes were sent that way too, so your flight was backed up and your journey took much longer than expected. That’s basically what happened to some of our users today for about an hour, starting at 7:48 am Pacific time.

An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam. As a result, about 14% of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions. We’ve been working hard to make our services ultrafast and “always on,” so it’s especially embarrassing when a glitch like this one happens. We’re very sorry that it happened, and you can be sure that we’ll be working even harder to make sure that a similar problem won’t happen again. All planes are back on schedule now.