Gmail outage prompts Google contrition

Google has apologized after an issue with Google Contacts caused disruption of its web-based email service, Gmail on Thursday.

"A problem with Google Contacts caused many Gmail users to experience slowness and degraded service for about an hour today,” a Google spokesperson told SCMagazineUS.com in an email Thursday. “Mail was back to full speed for everyone around 8 a.m. Pacific and the issue affecting Contacts was resolved shortly after. We're sorry for the inconvenience.”

The outage prevented users from accessing Gmail, Gtalk and their contact lists.

This has been the second outage for Gmail this month, after it went down for about one hour and 45 minutes on Sept. 1, according to reports. In addition, on Tuesday Google News experienced a one hour outage.

Google initially said on its Apps Status Dashboard that the outage affected a "small subset of users." Meanwhile, users flocked to Twitter to discuss the outage, and "Gmail" was one of the top trending topics of the day.