The started clearing up a little after noon EDT the same day.

Urs Hoelzle, Google senior vice president of Operations, said in a blog post that a system error directed some of their web traffic through Asia, creating the hangups and interruptions.

Caroline Dangson, an analyst for IDC, said outages made her glad she's not dependent on Google Apps for her work.

"When we look at businesses dependent on Google Analytics or Gmail, they can't afford to have Google crash on them," she said. "It's bad for business. The enterprise will start to consider using something that's always on - more reliable. It's a problem when you have this kind of hiccup system-wide and you're not seen as dependable."