World goes directionless as Google Maps suffers outage

San Francisco: Google Maps suffered a massive outage as a result of which several users were unable to get the directions on the maps for a long period of time.

While the website loaded as usual, the actual maps disappeared, leaving a blank world.

The outage started late on Friday, the website outage detector platform Down Detector reported.

Users received text directions, reviews and recommendations but could not view directions on the maps.

According to posts on Google Maps Platform Status Dashboard, the problem was with the directions and several other Maps-related application programming interfaces (APIs).

The users experienced Service Outage for a long time. However, the services were restored on Saturday morning.

Google later responded: "Multiple Geo Enterprise services experiencing high rates of error. Mitigation work is currently underway by our engineering team."

The company said that "Maps API Services are starting to return to normal".

While 48 per cent Maps users had problems with the app, 47 per cent reported problems with the Google Maps website.

"Everyone on the road is trying to find the fastest route now. Since #GoogleMaps is down," posted a twitter user.

"Google Maps is down for the first time in my life," another user said.