Google Calendar Access Is Disrupted

Google Calendar crashed for many users Thursday morning, a hiccup for the tech giant's popular productivity tools that could hurt its pitch to potential enterprise customers.

Alphabet Inc.'s Google said the outage affected consumer and corporate accounts that pay for its services, showing a page titled "server error" when users tried to access their calendars. The company said service was restored for some customers around 11:30 a.m. ET and that it expected a full resolution "in the near future."

The extent of the disruption wasn't clear, though even a fraction of Google users would be millions of people. Google's email service, often used in conjunction with calendar, has more than a billion users.

Big tech companies such as Google, Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. are hit with software outages a few times a year. Most of the problems are resolved within a few hours.

Still, sudden turbulence in their products prompt users to voice questions or displeasure on social media, capturing just how much these digital services have invaded everyday life.

For Google, outages take on increasing prominence as the company in recent years has muscled in on Microsoft Corp.'s turf of workplace productivity tools such as email, calendar and document creation. News Corp's The Wall Street Journal, for example, in the past year switched from using Microsoft's Outlook program to Google Calendar and its web-based Gmail software for email.

Write to Jack Nicas at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 30, 2016 14:05 ET (18:05 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.