Slack, the messaging service used by millions of people at work and at school, suffered a global shutdown on Monday, the first day back for most people returning from New Year’s holidays.
It is the latest technological flaw to show how disturbing technical difficulties can be when millions of people depend on just a few services to work and go to school from home during the pandemic.
The company stopped releasing its daily user count after reaching 12 million last year.
“Our team is investigating and we are sorry for any problems this may be causing,” said Slack in a declaration.
The outage started at about 10:00 am Eastern time and stopped service in the US, Germany, India, the United Kingdom, Japan and elsewhere. At 12:30 pm, the service was still sporadic and Slack said the outage was underway, but that some users may begin to notice improvements. Slack said people should check https://status.slack.com for updates.
Interruptions in Internet services are not uncommon, they are usually resolved relatively quickly and are rarely the result of hackers or other intentional damage. Google fell briefly in December, with people in several countries temporarily unable to access their Gmail accounts, watch YouTube videos, or get their documents online during an outage on Monday. In August, Zoom fell briefly so many students were starting the school year at home And in September, Microsoft services had an interruption that lasted five hours.
The shutdown occurs while Slack is in the process of being acquired by Salesforce.com for $ 27.7 billion. The deal aims to give the two companies a better chance of competing with the industry’s former powerhouse, Microsoft.