Slack, the messaging service used by millions of people for work and school, suffered a global outage on Monday, the first day before for most people returning from their New Year’s holiday.
It is the latest technological issue that shows how difficult technical difficulties can be when millions of people depend on only a few services to work and go home from school during the pandemic.
The company stopped releasing the daily number of users after exceeding 12 million last year.
“Our team is currently investigating and we are sorry for any issues it may cause,” Slack said in a prepared document. statement.
The panel began around 10 a.m. Eastern Time and cut off service to the United States, Germany, India, the United Kingdom, Japan and elsewhere. At 12:30 pm, the service was still sporadic and Slack said the outage was in progress, but that some users might start to see improvements. Slack said people should check https://status.slack.com for updates.
Internet service outages are not uncommon, are usually resolved relatively quickly, and are only rarely the result of piracy or other malicious intent. Google dropped briefly in December, with people from multiple countries unable to briefly access their Gmail accounts, watch videos on YouTube, or access their documents online during a break. In August, Zoom fell short all students started the school year at home. And in September, Microsoft services had a five-hour outage.
The outage comes as Slack is being acquired by Salesforce.com for $ 27.7 billion. The agreement aims to give the two companies a better fight in the competition against the long-term Microsoft industry.