Google services hit by outage

Google, owned by parent Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), suffered a brief outage on Monday morning as a number of the group’s services including YouTube, Gmail and Google Drive went offline. The outage was relatively brief, lasting just over half an hour, but the disruption impacted users globally although the company’s core Google search engine remained unaffected. READ: Google and Facebook to face new regulatory agency in the UK from next year Google-connected smart devices such as its Home speakers and voice assistant were also impacted by the disruption, the caused of which is still not publicly known. Such outages, however, are rare for Google, with users having last suffered issues with the firm’s services last June due to server problems. However, some have highlighted that despite the brief nature of the outage, it has highlighted just how many millions of internet users have become reliant on a single entity for a raft of services ranging from internet searches to diary-keeping and email. Alphabet shares were up 0.3% at US$1,779 in mid-morning trading in New York.