A brief Gmail outage on Monday morning prompted a deluge of tweets — both comic and confused — wondering why the widely used email service was down.
A 502 error message appeared at 9 a.m. PT for about 15 minutes each time Gmail's inboxes loaded on web browsers, but emails sent from Android and iPhone apps reached their destinations. GChat, the instant-messaging service built into Gmail's homepage, also failed on the web but worked on mobile.
Many users also reported that Chrome, Google's web browser, crashed repeatedly during the outage.
It is unclear what caused the servers to stop working.
Google did not immediately respond to requests from TheWrap for comment.
"Gmail is dead and General Motors is alive" was quickly tweeted by numerous people — a joke harkening back to Vice President Joe Biden's Democratic National Convention speech saying "bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive."
Jeff Jarvis, a City University of New York journalism professor and prolific tweeter, wondered: "Is Gmail downtown the new Rwanda?"
An account parodying the New York City transit system, @FakeMTA, wrote: "The G train enjoyed a rare moment of working slightly better than Gmail."
Owen Jones, a writer for The Independent, tweeted: "Sure Gmail crashing made an appearance in Revelations. The two hundred million lion-headed cavalry come next #gmailpocalypse"
Stuff Journalists Like wrote: "Gmail's down, Chrome is crashing. If Twitter crashes, I'm looting."
And a user called Pantse Macabre tweeted: "BREAKING: Gmail servers in Bermuda enjoying spa time."
