Leading search engine and program provider Google has admitted that an error in its traffic routing system led to its services being extremely restricted on Thursday May 15th.

The problem, which lasted for several hours, started just before 16:00 BST after it was found that Google services were being sent via servers in Asia, severely slowing down a number of major websites including YouTube and Gmail and affecting small businesses in IT across the UK.

Senior vice president of operations at Google Urs Hoelzle said that 14 per cent of users around the world were affected, stating that it was always sad when an embarrassing glitch sets back the hard work of technicians at the organisation.

He continued: "We're very sorry that it happened, and you can be sure that we'll be working even harder to make sure that a similar problem won't happen again."

The creators of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, met at Stanford University in 1995 and started working on the system in earnest in 1997.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent).