Google (News - Alert) Drive generally does a good job as an online file storage system and office suite, as long as it works. For many users on Monday, it didn’t.

Google Drive went down for a couple of hours, and users were greeted with a page that simply read, “502: That’s an error,” with a drawing of a robot, wrench in hand, attempting to repair itself.

“We're aware of a problem with Google Drive affecting a significant subset of users,” a status page on Google’s site read. “The affected users are unable to access Google Drive. We will provide an update by 3/18/13 12:10 PM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.”

A couple of hours later, Google posted another message saying the issue had been resolved.

“We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support,” the message said. “Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.”

As of this writing, Google Drive’s functionality appeared to be back to normal, with no apparent error messages and the document editing functionality working to its fullest.

Google has also been dealing with the widespread criticism following the announcement of its plan to shut down Google Reader in July. The move came as part of a “spring cleaning” of relatively obscure Google products announced by Urs Hölzle, senior vice president of technical infrastructure and a Google Fellow.

Other products planned for retirement include the Google Voice BlackBerry (News - Alert) app ad Google Building Maker, a tool for creating 3D buildings for Google Earth and Google Maps.

 Google Cloud Connect, which allows Windows users to save Microsoft (News - Alert) Office Documents in Google Drive, is also on the chopping block, having been replaced with a Windows version of Google Drive.