Massive outage hits Google services worldwide

(FILES) A file illustration picture taken on April 29, 2018, shows the Google logo displayed on a screen and reflected on a tablet in Paris. AFP photo/Lionel BONAVENTURE

Paris, France — A massive outage knocked Google services, including Gmail and video sharing platform YouTube, offline across much of the globe Monday.

Within minutes, social media sites were awash with hashtags including #googledown and #YouTubeDOWN as hundreds of millions of internet users tried vainly to connect to the US search engine.

Google indicated the outage had affected all of its services for the “majority” of users.