Tech Trend 247

Gmail experienced an outage for several hours during the U.S. workday Wednesday, and social media predictably freaked out.

Users in the UK and U.S. appeared most affected during the period, with work-based Gmail proving an issue for some office-based workers.

Google first said it was investigating reports of an issue at 8:16 AM PT Wednesday, and that users were being redirected to a page with 'Service not available, contact your administrator.' 

By 8:58, the company had identified the root cause and service was restored for some users at 9:40.

The outage affected the U.S. and Europe in particular, with the East Coast and UK hit worse than others.

Other Google services, including Calendar, Drive, Sheets and Hangouts were unaffected.

With all that spare time on their hands free of tyranny of work email, workers flocked to Twitter to recount their anguish and unleash the memes.

Mashable has reached out to Google to find out when full service will be restored.