The glitch lasted for about three hours Monday morning, according to media reports. Users began to notice issues with Hangouts. On its Apps Status Dashboard, Google later said Google Talk and Google Hangouts were suffering "Service disruptions," a less severe status than "Service outages." 

Some users said Google Drive, Google's cloud storage and office-applications suite, also went offline. Google confirmed that only the Sheets component of Google Drive was affected by the disruption.

"We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support," said a statement on the Apps Status Dashboard. "Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."

Last Jan. 24, Gmail and the Google social network, the main homes for Hangouts, were affected by a disruption lasting less than 30 minutes. Some 10 percent of users, owever, were without access for almost an hour.

Google later said an internal process had hit a bug, causing an incorrect configuration to spread across its network. It noted the issue has been resolved, and that Google is now focused on correcting the bug that caused the outage. It was also emplacing more checks and monitors to ensure that this kind of problem doesn't happen again.

Google has been expanding its professional offerings to challenge Microsoft Office's productivity tools and its Outlook email program. It currently offers paid versions of its free Web-based suite to corporations.