NBC-New York is reporting a significant outage struck Google platforms around the world early Mon., Dec. 14, taking down YouTube, Gmail and other popular services for roughly an hour. Users encountered error messages any time they tried to access services, including tools like Docs and Sheets, smart home services like Nest and educational tools like Google Classroom. DownDetector showed a massive outage spike on all major Google products starting just after 6:30 a.m., Eastern Time. About an hour later, users started reporting that services were loading normally again. By 9 a.m., Google reported, everything was back to normal. Technology blog TechCrunch writes that similar outages were seen in locations worldwide starting at roughly the same time. The cause was not immediately clear, though it appeared to potentially be tied to Google Accounts. Google's status hub acknowledged an outage across its products. "The problem with Classroom should be resolved for the vast majority of affected users. ...Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better," the company posted at 7:52 a.m. Read the full story at nbcnewyork [dot] com.