More downtime for Gmail

A small number of Gmail users are having trouble accessing their email today, Google has admitted.

It's the latest in a run of troubles for the web firm, particularly with its email service. It was down for nearly three hours at the end of last month, after its data centres overloaded. A similar problem took the system down in August.

Google stressed the latest trouble was affecting only a small number of its 113 million users.

"We're aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a small subset of users. The affected users are having difficulty accessing their accounts," the firm said in a statement.

"The team is working as quickly as they can to resolve the problem. We know how important e-mail is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously."

Click here to check Gmail's service level, and here to read about how the web giant blacklisted the entire internet.