mahikarnam

Google Inc said on Monday that many users of its Gmail service are having trouble accessing their online e-mail accounts due to a temporary outage in a contacts system used by Gmail. The problems began at about 2100 GMT and a company spokesman said Google is starting to implement a fix for the problem right now.

"We are starting to roll out a fix now and hope to have the problem resolved as quickly as possible," said a Google spokesman. Google said an outage in the contacts system used by Gmail is preventing the e-mail system from loading properly.

The company also said that the new incoming messages are safe even if a user can not access their account. Users across the United States, Canada and India reported problems with Gmail and a Google employee also reported that the company's own corporate e-mail account was down.