Google services outage leaves Bangladesh students, professionals in trouble

A number of services of tech giant Google around the world were temporarily shut down on Thursday due to technical issues. Third-party web monitoring firm DownDetector reported that the disturbance started from around 10:15am Bangladesh time.

The services, including Gmail and Google Drive, were disrupted in Bangladesh, India, Australia, Japan and other parts of the world.

Students and private sector employees have suffered the most from this problem.

Users reported that they could not send mail and attach files. Many also said that they could not access their accounts. In addition, mail sent from other mail services did not reach Gmail properly.

Users have also complained of problems with G Suite, including the Google Drive.

Some users said that they were unable to upload or download files through Google Drive while some said they could upload but were unable to share.

The outage left students in trouble in Bangladesh, who are taking classes and exams online amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Most of the educational institutions in Bangladesh rely on services provided by Google to conduct academic activities.

“I could not browse properly because Google Doc was loading slowly. As a result, I had to submit an incomplete paper for my midterm exam,” said Faria Alam, a Business Administration student at the BRAC University.

Computer Science and Engineering student Tousif Zaman says he missed the deadline to submit an assignment.

“Some of Google's services were out, causing problems in filing our assignments on programming and coding. I missed the deadline, which left me with less score for the test,” said the student of  Noakhali University of Science and Technology. 

The outage also hit the private sector. 

“Gmail's was not working from around 12pm to 3 pm. Later, it was fixed but we could not attach files. Every time I tried to send, the service was unavailable," said Pronoy Ghosh, a business analytics manager for the Surjer Hashi Network.

Meanwhile, the world's largest search engine Google has acknowledged the existence of this outage to G Suite users, saying it is investigating the issue.

Nearly seven hours later, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, and other Google services were restored, announced Google.

Users in Bangladesh reported that they were able to use the services from around 5pm.

“The problem with Gmail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. System reliability is a top priority at Google. We are making continuous improvements to make our systems better,” read a post by Google Applications.