Scattered Gmail outages resolved, Google says

Issues with Google's Gmail service that prevented some users from accessing their e-mail accounts Tuesday afternoon have been fixed, the search giant said.

"The problem with Google Mail should be resolved," Google said in a note on its Apps Status Dashboard. "Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."

Google's first acknowledged the problem as of 12:42 p.m. EST, noting that the issue affected less than 2 percent of users.

We're aware that some users are experiencing an error when accessing their Gmail," a Google spokesman told FoxNews.com. "We’ve implemented a fix and users should be able to access their mail shortly. We apologize for the inconvenience."

The brief outage nevertheless lasted long enough to affect many users -- even Justin Bieber.

#CantSayNo to fans," Bieber tweeted Tuesday afternoon. "I #makeapromise to talk to them and my #Gmail is down so add me on Facebook."