Google Drive, Docs, and Sheets down for thousands of users in US; engineering team investigating

Reports of outages for Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Sheets began emerging on Downdetector just after noon EST on Wednesday (November 12). By 1 p.m., over 2,800 users had reported issues with Google Drive alone, while hundreds more reported problems with Google search, Google Sheets, and Google Docs.

Google confirms access issues

Google acknowledged the problems, stating it was “investigating access issues” impacting Google Drive, Sheets, and Docs. The Google Workspace status dashboard confirmed there is currently no workaround available for affected users.

Impact on users

According to Downdetector, nearly 3,000 users reported issues as of 1 p.m. ET, with approximately half experiencing server connection errors. More than a third of users reported difficulty accessing their personal files.

Users described widespread disruptions on social media and forums:

“I’ve tried reloading Google Docs and Google Drive many times but it still doesn’t work for me.”

“Google Docs and Sheets are still offline. Can't access or download any of these files on my personal drive.”

“It came back for a bit but went back down shortly after.”

“Saying I can't open any of my Google Docs. Keeps saying 'Error making file offline.' It works on my laptop but not my phone.”

“Why is down??? I’m doing HW, I have like 15 papers to do. Come back!!!!”

Google status updates

Google posted a status update confirming the issue:

“We are experiencing an issue with Google Drive, Google Sheets, Google Docs beginning at Wednesday, 2025-11-12 09:00 PST. Our engineering team continues to investigate the issue. We will provide an update by Wednesday, 2025-11-12 11:45 PST with current details. We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption.”

In its latest update at 9:18 PM UTC, Google stated:

"We are investigating access issues with multiple Workspace products. Our engineering team is actively investigating the issue. We will provide an update by Wednesday, 2025-11-12 14:15 PST with details."

Some users reported encountering SSL errors, including messages such as:

"This site can't provide a secure connection / ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR"

when trying to access the affected services.

Google suggested a few temporary workarounds for impacted users:

-Reboot routers to potentially resolve connection issues.

-Access services via a mobile device as an alternative.