Gmail suffered a service outage earlier today, leaving millions of people unable to send emails. The outage also affected other Google apps such as Google Drive, preventing users from sending email attachments.

Hundreds if not thousands of Gmail users flocked to Twitter to complain about the outage.

Their apparent irritation is misplaced. Many users were just as likely to benefit from Gmail's absence, since research has consistently shown that emails can reduce productivity and increase stress. So rather than preventing people from working, the outage may have caused the opposite.

Gmail Down = Productivity Up

Google is arguably one of the most reputable tech companies in the world, so the fact that Gmail went down this morning was a cause for surprise. The email service counts around 1.5 billion users worldwide, many of whom apparently believe that Google is somehow impervious to technical problems.