Two days after making landfall, Hurricane Sandy is still causing consternation — this time, among Gmail users nationwide. The ripple effect the storm has had on communication services briefly took down several popular Google products — including Gmail, Google Chat, Google Hangout, Google Drive and Google Reader — on Wednesday evening for users from New York to Los Angeles.
“We believe about 10% of our users experienced difficulties reaching Google for six minutes this afternoon,” the company said in an official statement. “We apologize to everyone affected and have worked hard to get our services back to normal as quickly as possible.”
What the official statement doesn’t say is that Google customer service representatives are telling those who call that some users were briefly unable to access Gmail and other services around 6 p.m. ET because their Internet connections were being routed through computers in the New York area, the Huffington Post has learned. Google told concerned customers that hiccups could happen again during the next few days, but the company is working to prevent it.
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More on Hurricane Sandy 2012
Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern parts of the U.S., is considered to be the largest recorded Atlantic hurricane in terms of diameter, with winds reaching 1,100 miles. Now Apple is working with the American Red Cross to help thousands of victims affected by the tropical storm. Apple has setup a page in the iTunes Store for people to pledge donations ranging from $5 to $200, as shown in the image above. You can check it out 
