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Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) was suffering an outage in its widely used Gmail service. This is not just a personal email issue because many businesses use Gmail. On top of that, many businesses that send out emails during the day are sending their communication to people and businesses who use Gmail.

The cause of the outage is not yet known, and the peak woes seemed to be from about 1:55 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EST. Outage issues were still present as of 2:45 or so, such as sending and receiving emails automatically and contacts not being accessible. Still, emails are coming in and going out, intermittently of course.

We have not seen a drop in Google stock that was directly tied to Gmail outages. The stock was dropping most of the day and has actually started to recover. Shares were down 2.25% at $1,133.94 as of 2:45 p.m. EST.

With all of the hack attacks at major systemic destinations, it is fair to wonder if this is more than a routine series of server outages. Again, the service is coming in, but it is intermittent.