India, Feb. 18 -- YouTube experienced a widespread global outage on Tuesday, disrupting access for users across multiple countries, including India and the United States, with hundreds of thousands reporting problems loading videos and using related services.

Early during the disruption, Google acknowledged the issue in a public statement posted by TeamYouTube, saying: "We're aware some of you are having issues accessing YouTube right now. Our teams are aware, and we'll provide updates as soon as we have them."

Outage tracking website Downdetector showed a sharp surge in complaints worldwide. In the United States alone, more than 320,000 users flagged issues at the peak of the disruption. In India, reports also jumped significantly, wit...