Google's Gmail and Drive suffer global outages

Users in Australia, the US, Europe and Asia report problems with various applications for several hours

Google has been hit by outages in a host of countries around the world, with users reporting issues with Gmail, Google Drive, Hangouts and Google Maps for several hours.

Various websites that track Gmail problems and outages, showed a spike in users reporting problems with the email service from about 1pm AEDT (2am GMT).