Gmail outage currently causing problems in Hangouts, Google+ and Google Drive

Gmail is currently facing disruptions in its services, with users reporting problems when logging into their accounts, sending and receiving messages or the website not opening. Integrated services Google +, Hangouts and Google Drive have also been affected.Some users trying to log into Hangouts, have been getting an error which says "Gmail is temporarily unable to access your Contacts. You may experience issues while this persists." Others who have access to their accounts are facing patchy connections. Google's App Status Dashboard confirms that there is a global outage as it  indicates many of its services have been disrupted.Many having taken it to Twitter to complain about the problems they have been facing with Gmail.  Google is yet to comment on the issue, though it looks like the problem has affected users globally.