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Several users have reported outages in Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Sheets on Wednesday. The blackouts affected thousands of users as they could not access their files and documents.
The problems were followed and reported on Downdetector (a well-known outage-detecting site), showing a rapid increase in complaints right after the initial outage notifications came out.
By 1 PM EST, over 2,800 users reported problems, particularly with Google Drive. Others reported issues with Google Docs, Sheets, and even Google Search. Users mostly experienced server connection errors and were unable to open or download files from their personal drives.
Complaints from users flooded social media and online forums. One user lamented, “I’ve tried reloading Google Docs and Google Drive many times but it still doesn’t work for me.” Another said, “Google Docs and Sheets are still offline. Can’t access or download any of these files on my personal drive.” Others said they do get intermittent access, with some platforms briefly working before going offline again.
Google has officially confirmed the outages through its Workspace status dashboard. The company said it is ‘investigating access issues’ affecting Drive, Sheets, and Docs. The problem reportedly started at 9:00 AM PST (9:30 PM IST), and the engineering team is working to identify the cause.
“We are experiencing an issue with Google Drive, Google Sheets, and Google Docs starting on Wednesday, 2025-11-12 09:00 PST,” the company said in an update. “Our engineering team continues to investigate the issue. We will provide an update by Wednesday, 2025-11-12 11:45 PST with current details. We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption.”
A later update at 9:18 p.m. UTC confirmed the ongoing investigations, with further information promised by 2:15 PM PST.
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Apart from general connectivity issues, users also experienced SSL errors, including the message: “This site can’t provide a secure connection / ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR,” while accessing affected services. These SSL protocol errors further prevented smooth access.
Google advised users affected by the outage to try a couple of temporary workarounds, such as rebooting routers to refresh network connections and accessing services via mobile devices as an alternative.
The service outage had a significant impact on the users who depend on Google Workspace for their personal, academic, and professional activities. The discontent was palpable on various social networks, and one student even expressed it in a post, “Why is it down??? I’m doing HW, I have like 15 papers to do. Come back!!!!”.
As Google continues its investigation, users should keep an eye on the official Google Workspace status page for updates and wait patiently as the engineers resolve the issue.
