Google Maps, a smartphone and web service used by billions across the world, crashed briefly on Friday for reasons unknown, sparking hilarious reactions on social media from long-time users of the service.

Google Maps was unusable on the computer and on Android and iOS devices, and Downdetector showed a massive spike in user reports about the outage from around 3.19pm GMT (8.49pm IST) on Friday.

Many users who encountered the outage said that they were being greeted with a message saying, “The server encountered an error and could not complete your request.”

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“If the problem persists, please report your problem and mention this error message and the query that caused it. That’s all we know,” the message from Google Maps read.

The outage, which affected millions of people around the world,, sparked a series of hilarious reactions on Twitter, with many posting photos of physical maps, saying it was time let go of technology and go ‘old school’.

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Others, meanwhile, switched to Apple Maps out of frustration.

A host of other hilarious reactions, making use of popular memes, were posted on social media. Check them out below:

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However, at the time of writing this article, the number of crash reports on Downdetector had decreased considerably, and Google Maps appeared to be functioning normally, at least for some users. Many social media users also confirmed that Maps was back up and running.

Google, however, has yet to release a statement on the reported global outage and the possible reasons behind the same.