Google Drive and Docs are down for some users, company is investigating [Update: Fixed now!]

Google is suffering from problems today that are preventing some users from accessing services such as Google Docs, Drive, Slides and Sheets. Instead, they’re getting a 500 server error returned.

According to the volume of complaints on Twitter, it would seem to be a reasonably widespread issue and some members of the TNW team also couldn’t reach Drive or Docs.

Google’s service status dashboard also reflects the problems across these four areas, with the first problems seeming to start at around 15:20 GMT today. However, Twitter users began reporting problems at least 30 minutes before this.

Google said it is investigating the error:

We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Drive. We will provide more information shortly. Affected users will notice 500 errors and latency.

We’ll let you know when normal service is resumed. Interestingly, this is the second outage within a week for Google services, although the problems on October 22 affected Gmail, Calendar, Talk and Hangouts, rather than Drive or Docs.

Update 16:20GMT: Google has updated its service status page to say it’s still looking into the problem, and that an estimated fix will be communicated by 18:30GMT.

Update: Google updated its App Status page at 20:50GMT to reflect that the problems had been fixed

➤ Google App Status

Image credit: Ken Wolter / Shutterstock.com