A global service outage seems to be affecting some Gmail users, with customers across Europe and North America complaining of being unable to access the service. Some users have reported being unable to load their email accounts, while others are redirected to a 502 error page.

Strangely enough, the outage appears to coupled with a mass crash of Google’s Chrome browser, with a handful of us at ITProPortal headquarters seeing our browsers quit repeatedly and unexpectedly.

Google has yet to comment on the outage or update its Apps Status Dashboard, but the concurrent disruptions of both Gmail and Chrome lead us to believe it may be a server-related issue.

As has become the norm, frustrated Gmail users have taken to Twitter, Facebook and other social networks to complain about the outage, highlighting just how much the world has become dependent on the free service.

Update: Google updated its service status dashboard at 17:30 GMT, saying that it is "investigating reports of an issue with Google Mail." At 17:45 GMT, the firm said that the "problem with Google Drive should be resolved."