Internet giant Google lost control of its services for around six minutes on Halloween, and plunged around ten percent of its users into app and web darkness, according to The Inquirer.
The downtime reportedly occurred late in the evening in the UK. Logging in to Gmail displayed a temporary message on a PC while on an Iphone 5 there was a message about either the username or password being wrong.
A check on Twitter showed that the problem was a wide one, and that people were panicking about it.
Google's App Status dashboard showed a dot against a number of its products, including Gmail, Talk, Drive, Documents, Groups, Presentations and Video for business.
Google had the same message for users of each service. "We believe about 10 [percent] of Google users experienced difficulties reaching Google for six minutes this afternoon starting at approximately 2:41pm PT. We apologize to everyone affected and have worked hard to get our services back to normal as quickly as possible," it said.
Six minutes later it added, "The problem with Google Mail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."
