Couldn't get into your Gmail account this morning? You weren't the only one. Google was hit by an outage across its services, with the firm's email, online storage and productivity apps all affected by the problem.

The company’s services status page flagged an issue with Gmail, Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drawings shortly after 11am. Users trying to access the services were greeted with error messages, with some unable to to get into their online storage at all.

Fortunately - or unfortunately, if you were hoping for some more downtime - access to Google Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides was restored within 20 minutes; Gmail followed by 11.40am. The problems were fully resolved by 1pm.