Google Hit By Widespread Outage, But Back Online

(RTTNews) - Search engine Google was briefly down on Tuesday, with users in the U.S., U.K., Australia and other countries reporting issues with the website.

According to DownDetector.com, the website was "having problems sine 9:12 PM EDT." At its peak in the U.S., over 40,000 people reported that Google wasn't working. However, it dropped quickly, and stayed below 100 since around 2 a.m. ET.

"We're aware of a software update issue that occurred late this afternoon Pacific Time and briefly affected availability of Google Search and Maps, and we apologize for the inconvenience," Google said in a statement. "We worked to quickly address the issue and our services are now back online."

Google was trending on Twitter briefly, with many users using the hashtag #GoogleDown.

Users also found issues with Google's sister platforms Gmail, Google maps and Google images, which rely on Google's search engine to operate.