The outage of several apps and services powered by tech giants Facebook and Google over the past few days brought tremendous problems to the work and daily life of Vietnamese users.

The outage affecting Facebook and its sister apps such as Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, was first recorded on Wednesday and it was not until late Thursday when the apps appeared to return to normal.

Many Facebook users reported being unable to post new statuses or share content on their personal accounts during this period, whereas others reported not even being able to log into their accounts.

The problems were encountered in both web and mobile app versions of the social media platform.

Many claim that the issues had considerable impacts on both their daily and professional life. Internet retailers, in particular, seemed to have suffered the most serious consequences.

Thao Nguyen, the owner of a children’s clothing store in Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City, said she was unable to reply to customer questions submitted via the shop’s Facebook page.

“The problem persisted for an entire day and I ended up receiving a lot of complaints from buyers,” Nguyen continued, adding that the credibility and revenue of her store were severely affected.

Hoang Hai, a media professional, said that the company was unable to live-stream an important event on its Facebook page, which affected its operations.

According to Huynh Thanh Phi, director of Ho Chi Minh City-based Leo Brothers Marketing Company, the Facebook downtime resulted in serious damage to advertisers who depend on the platform’s services.

Facebook announced via Twitter on Thursday night (Vietnam time) that “a server configuration change” was to blame for the massive outage.

“We've now resolved the issues and our systems are recovering,” the tweet reads.

This is not the first time the major social media site has been hit with an outage, but it might have been the longest. Facebook has also confirmed the issue is not related to a DDoS attack.

In the meantime, users of many Google services including Gmail, Drive, and Maps, also faced multiple inconveniences on Wednesday morning.

In Vietnam, people could not send emails with attached files, which posed huge challenges to companies throughout the country.

“My job is to deal with emails from my company’s clients on a daily basis, which greatly depends on Gmail,” said Nhat Thien, who works for an export firm in District 4.

Google said on Thursday all of its problems had been fixed and services have returned to normal.

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