New Delhi, Aug 20 (IANS): After Google, Facebook-owned WhatsApp on Thursday evening experienced outages globally as users faced connection issues as well as could not send or receive messages in several parts of the world.

According to WABetainfo, a website that tracks WhatsApp in Beta,, the issue was at the server side and did not "depend on WhatsApp version of network connection.

"WhatsApp is experiencing a partial outage for several users. It's not possible to use the service because the server is down. Note that some users might still be able to use the service," said the portal.

According to DownDetector, nearly 66 per cent WhatsApp users faced connect issues while 30 per cent were unable to send of receive messages.

WhatsApp was yet to report the problem.

Earlier in the day, Google services especially Gmail and Drive suffered a massive outage globally, including in India.

Those affected took to social media, reporting issues with opening attachments, failed logins and emails not landing in their inboxes.

After spending several hours in the dark, the services started resuming globally in the evening, with Google saying that Gmail has been restored for some users.

"Gmail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time-frame is an estimate and may change," the tech giant informed on its Apps Status page.

It later added: "The problem with Gmail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support."

For Google Drive, the main issue was file syncing that failed to happen.