Google goes down: world's largest search engine briefly drops off the web without explanation

Brief outage seemed focused around Europe - but all is back to normal now

As Google struggles with the implications of the EU's 'right to be forgotten' ruling its website is apparently facing far more straightforward challenges, with users across Europe reporting the search engine as unavailable.

Although Google's own Apps Status Dashboard says the search engine is working just fine (and by all accounts everything is now back to normal) external tools reported outages focused in central Europe, with Germany and the UK particularly affected.

Of course as with any even of pressing and public importance, there was a fair amount of outraged and catty responses on Twitter (see also Facebook's brief time spent kicked to the curb two weeks ago).

However, this brief outage seems to be nothing but a small blip for Google - especially compared with its ongoing battle with the EU's court ruling on the 'right to be forgotten'.

Critics of the legislation have been up in arms after search results relating to a top UK lawyer and Wall Street banker were 'disappeared' from Google, but others have suggested that the US company is deliberately misinterpreting the ruling in order to stir up public anger.