Is Google still down? Search engine stops working for thousands of users

Alphabet's Google services stopped working for thousands of users on Monday night, according to the tracking website Downdetector.com.

The website tracked disruption in the US, as well as Japan, Canada and Australia. Many users on social media questioned the rare disruption, which appeared to last a few hours. For some, the availability of Google's suite of programs, including Search, Maps and Gmail, was intermittent. Users attempting to use the search engine were met with a 502 or 500 error.

The service appeared to have been mostly restored this morning, and Google said the disruption was due to a software update.

“We are aware of a software update issue that occurred late this afternoon, Pacific Time, and briefly affected availability of Google Search and Maps,” the company said. “We apologise for the inconvenience. We worked to quickly address the issue and our services are now back online.”

Alphabet last month reported a 14 per cent drop in second-quarter net profit on an annual basis, as the company missed analysts' sales expectations.

Net profit at Google's parent company dropped to about $16 billion in the three months to the end of June. “In the second quarter, our performance was driven by search and cloud [businesses] … the investments we have made over the years in AI [artificial intelligence] and computing are helping to make our services particularly valuable for consumers and highly effective for businesses of all sizes” Alphabet’s chief executive Sundar Pichai said at the time.