Google has apologised to users who had their Gmail inboxes accidently wiped clean recently.

They have said that the emails were “never lost” and “things should be back to normal for everyone soon”.

Many of the missing emails were backed up on tape, which explains the delay in restoring them, the most popular search engine said.

The blame for the incident has been put on a software bug and they are now saying only 0.02% of Gmail users were affected.  Initially they said less than 0.08% had been affected.