Only an hour ago, users in Europe, the U.S., Canada, India and beyond all reported suddenly being unable to access their GMail (or Google Mail) accounts in what appeared to be a widespread outage. Google’s App Status Dashboard was originally unaware of the issue, but at around 7:20pm GMT the service updated to show downtime for GMail and Google+, though further details of the downtime are still unknown.

The error being seen by most users at the moment is a 500 Internal Server Error. These errors, as the name suggests, always tend to be a minor issue on the server (in this case, Google’s) – although it says nothing about what the problem actually is – and are usually temporary. Judging by the response on Twitter, however, the problem is currently affecting a huge number of users both on GMail and Google+. The latter also affects Youtube Comment boxes under the new system now in force there, which means those aren’t loading at all on videos, as well as Hangouts across the web and mobile. GMail users report their issue affects not just web access, but also other clients trying to download GMail via both POP and IMAP.

As of an update released just before this article published here on S.FM, many users state their services have returned; though others still state they are unable to get in; and those who HAVE gotten access to their email back are continuing to report intermittent problems. Nevertheless, it looks likely all issues will be resolved shortly; and we await Google’s response on what happened if any is delivered.