Google Drive went offline on Thursday afternoon leaving millions of businesses unable to function.

The server for Google's office tools section started having problems at around 3pm BST, affecting users in the UK, Europe, US and South America.

Google said: "There is a known service disruption. You can stay updated with the Apps Status Dashboard."

It is unclear what has caused the problem with the hugely popular file creation and sharing service.

Down Detector, a site that monitors internet outages, reported hundreds of incidents. Its live map showed problems in countries across the world including the UK, France, the US, Brasil and India.

Google Drive is home to tools that are regularly used in offices, including text, spreadsheet and slide show editors.

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As businesses turn to the cloud for their services, many companies have dropped the use of offline programs, such as Microsoft Word and Excel, in favour of internet-hosted ones like those in Drive.

Affected users took to social media to vent their frustration at being unable to carry out their work.

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Some users said the outage could affect their ability to graduate from college.

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