Gmail users in the U.S., Canada and Europe unable to access emails MOUTAIN VIEW, Calif., Jan. 24 (UPI) -- Google has confirmed its free Gmail email service suffered a brief outage Friday, saying it has affected the United States as well as Europe and Canada. We will provide more information shortly," the company blogged. The outage occurred just before 2 p.m. EST, leaving millions of users unable to connect with Google's Gmail servers. Users attempting to access their Gmail accounts were greeted with a screen message saying, "We're sorry, but your Gmail account is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes. Service was reported to have been restored for most Gmail users after about 20 minutes, although there were scattered problems with sending emails and problems with Google+. "We expect a resolution for all users in the near future," Google wrote. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. Gmail has suffered outages before in 2009 and 2012.