Google suffers outage as users experience '500 error' messages
Internet browsers around the world are complaining about sporadic Google search engine failures, discussing the '500 error' using '#googledown' on Twitter.
The world’s largest search engine has seen intermittent outages in central Europe, with tweeters complaining about the error in a many languages – suggesting the problem is perhaps more widespread.
The outages are thought to have been caused by internal server issues but these didn’t effect users of the mobile site, Gmail or Google calendar.
The error read as follows: “500. That’s an error, the server encountered an error and could not complete your request.
“If the problem persists, please report your problem and mention this error message and the query that caused it. That’s all we know.”
Google wasn't available for comment at the time of this article's publication.
Internet users took to Twitter to express their confusion.
Topsy Analytics shows there has been a major spike in the use of #googledown on Twitter in the last 24 hours.
Google not working for you? You're not the only one... #googledown #googleisdown pic.twitter.com/y0y1yx5fN5
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarraUK) July 4, 2014
Time to dust off that 1972 set of Encyclopaedia Britannica #googledown — legsidefilth (@legsidefilth) July 4, 2014#googledown for 5 minutes - in theory they lost $8,915.90 based on Q1 revenues. I'm sure they don't mind...
— Ben Harper (@benharper87) July 4, 2014
There are indications that Google service is still experiencing trouble but Google also has its hands fulls in other areas, specifically regarding the “right to be forgotten” court battle which is heating up.