What you should know
- Google alerted Workspace users about a delay in receiving emails for some Gmail users on a Thursday, with the issue starting at 11:30 am ET and ending at 4:15 pm ET.
- The number of reports about Gmail on DownDetector went from 33 at 11:25 am ET to 761 by 1:55 pm, with 70% of those submitting a report stating that the problem was receiving their email in a timely manner.
- Google issued an update at 5:03 pm ET stating that the issue with email delays was mitigated for the majority of affected users at 2:45 PM, and that a few users may have observed delays until the full mitigation was done at 4:15 PM ET.
- According to Google’s preliminary analysis, the root cause of the issue appears to be an overload in Google Message Router (GMR), with a full incident report to be completed in the following days.
Full Story
Google pinged Workspace users on Thursday at 11:30 am ET. The message? Some Gmail users might experience email delays.
DownDetector, a website that tracks outages, saw a spike in Gmail reports. At 11:25 am ET, there were 33 reports. By 1:55 pm, that number had jumped to 761.
Fast forward to 5:03 pm ET. Google issued an update. The gist? “The email delay issue was mostly sorted by 2:45 PM.” But there’s a catch. “A few users may have noticed delays until 4:15 PM ET.”
DownDetector was flooded with user reports. 70% of them were about delayed email receipt. Another 16% had issues sending emails. And 14%? They couldn’t connect with the Gmail server at all.
One user, Elizabeth, chimed in on DownDetector. “Ah, glad to know it’s Gmail and not me. I was scared and lost why I couldn’t send one. Guess I’ll wait until Gmail is back up.”
The graph on DownDetector showed a clear dip during Thursday morning-afternoon. Gmail was down, no doubt about it.
Another user, Michael Hubert, had a different problem. “My emails are not being delivered. They’re sent but no one is receiving them.” Sounds bad, right? But the issue seemed to be limited in scope.
Despite the jump to 761 reports on DownDetector, it seems most people weren’t affected. Or maybe they didn’t realize Gmail was having problems.
Google’s official word? The incident started at 11:30 am ET and ended at 4:15 pm ET. That’s a total of 4 hours and 45 minutes.
On the Google Workspace Status Dashboard, the company spilled more details. “Some Gmail users experienced a delay in sending emails globally for a duration of 4 hours and 45 minutes. Any emails that were delayed after entering our system were auto retried and should have been delivered within a couple of hours after mitigation.”
And the cause of all this? Google pointed to an overload in Google Message Router (GMR). They promised a full incident report in the coming days to provide a detailed root cause.
