via theregister:
Updated Both Google and Facebook suffered outages Wednesday, with the Chocolate Factory leading the way and seemingly fixing its issues just as Zuck’s network became decidedly antisocial.
On Wednesday morning, around 0800 Pacific Time (1500 UTC), Google said it was “investigating reports of an issue with Gmail” in which some users were seeing error messages, and the webmail platform was running very slowly. Netizens were, at the time, already loudly protesting about the knackered service on social media.
Viewers of Google-owned YouTube reported similar slowdowns, and Google Drive users also had serious problems, pointing to a potential larger issue within the organisation’s data centers and connectivity links.
At 0945 PT, Google acknowledged the Drive outage, and admitted Gmail was still experiencing problems, especially with attaching or accessing files. By 1100 PT, however, the Chocolate Factory claimed the hiccups were resolved; your mileage may vary.
“We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better,” the web ads giant said in a statement.
Soon after, folks started reporting that Facebook was also taking the day off, leaving people unable to access it, suggesting all was not well at Menlo Park. The antisocial network’s other properties, such as Messenger, WhatsApp, Oculus, and Instagram, were also suffering outages, according to netizens.
One comes up, the other goes down … Downdetector‘s reports of complaints from Google and Facebook services
“Account Temporarily Unavailable,” was a message that some Facebook users from across the globe discovered on checking their pages. “Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes.”
Facebook confirmed its systems were unwell and falling offline for unlucky folks around the world. “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible,” it said.
Then, at noon here in California, a Facebook spokesman denied one possible explanation: that the Silicon Valley giant, and Google before it, were being subject to a massive denial-of-service attack.
We're focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm that the issue is not related to a DDoS attack.
— Facebook (@facebook) March 13, 2019