Google has apologised to users unable to get into their Gmail accounts last night.

The ad serving giant blamed a problem with Gmail's contact system for stopping the service loading properly.

The official blog post was titled: "We feel your pain, and we're sorry."

The problem happened late afternoon Eastern Time and so caused an explosion in the US blogosphere. Google said it didn't usually respond publicly to such problems, but decided to because: "We heard loud and clear today how much people care about their Gmail accounts."

Gmail is known as Googlemail in the UK and Germany. ®

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