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*Update: Gmail/Google Apps Email is currently down (now back online for some), more details at the foot of this post*

Several users are complaining on Twitter that Google, Gmail and Doubleclick (owned by Google) are down.

Dutch news service NU.nl briefly had to remove their ads (server by Doubleclick) because they weren’t loading and thus slowing down their sites. Since then they have placed the ads back so Doubleclick seems to be up again.

We could only verify the downtime for Canada which gives us a 502 server error and Google.us which seems to work for some but not for others:

Strangely enough adding ‘www’ in front of Google.ca does give us a Google front page which would suggest a simple DNS problem.

Google Apps Status also reports a ‘Service Disruption’ in their dashboard but I could access my own Gmail account just fine. On Saturday Google Calendar was inaccessible for a few users but this was fixed within a few hours.

The 502 error that users are currently seeing generally means that there is some type of miscommunication between a web server a database server. or in more technical terms: “the upstream server and the gateway/proxy do not agree on the protocol for exchanging data”.

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Update 1: Gmail/Google Apps Email is currently down
Gmail and Google Apps email is down at time of writing across the globe (see comments). The Google Apps dashboard shows the following:

Picture 5

Update 2:

Interestingly, Gmail is still accessible via IMAP and POP, so if you use Gmail via Mail or Outlook, you shouldn’t experience any issues. Gmail is also apparently still accessible via iGoogle.

Update 3:

The official Google Twitter account has just tweeted the following:

“We’re aware that people are having trouble accessing Gmail. We’re working on fixing it. Apologies for the inconvenience”

Update 4:

Google has just posted an announcement on the official Gmail blog, and I quote:

“We know many of you are having trouble accessing Gmail right now — we are too, and we definitely feel your pain. We don’t usually post about minor issues here (the Apps status dashboard and the Gmail Help Center are usually where this kind of information goes). Because this is impacting so many of you, we wanted to let you know we’re currently looking into the issue and hope to have more info to share here shortly. If you have IMAP or POP set up already, you should be able to access your mail that way in the meantime. We’re terribly sorry for the inconvenience and will get Gmail back up and running as soon as possible.”

Update 5

Gmail gradually returning online.