Gmail back after outage, but Google not alone in apologizing

Following a major outage of its email service Gmail, Google apologized to users for the inconvenience – but it was not the only tech site doing some apologizing.

Yahoo also had to issue an apology via its Twitter account Saturday morning (Manila time), after netizens criticized it for dissing Google while Gmail was down.

"The problem with Gmail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better," Google had said on its apps status dashboard after Gmail was back up at 4:23 a.m. Saturday.

However, Google did not give details on what caused the outage that also affected its other services.

For its part, Yahoo – which operates the rival email service Yahoo Mail – posted a tweet that "Gmail is temporarily unavailable," including a screenshot of a Google error message while Gmail was down.

Yahoo had since deleted that tweet and posted an apology.

Earlier today, a tweet that reflected bad judgment was posted and has been deleted. We apologize to @Google and the @Gmail team.

— Yahoo (@Yahoo) January 24, 2014

It added the @Yahoo Twitter handle "is used by our editorial team to inform about news and events."

A report on tech site Mashable said many Twitter users had pointed out Yahoo had its own problems in December, in some cases preventing users from accessing their emails for days. — LBG, GMA News