David Bridges
Today, Google Cloud experienced significant outages that caused widespread disruptions for various online services. The issues were first reported around 2 PM ET, affecting not only Google products but also numerous other applications and platforms. Although Google managed to restore functionality to its own apps, many businesses continued to face persistent problems impacting their users and services.
In an update issued at 4:16 PM ET, Google announced, “We have identified the root cause and applied appropriate mitigations. Our infrastructure has recovered in all regions except us-central1. Google Cloud products that rely on the affected infrastructure are seeing recovery in multiple locations. Our engineers are aware of the customers still experiencing issues on us-central1 and multi-region/us and are actively working on full recovery. We do not have an ETA for full recovery.” This statement highlights the ongoing challenges faced by users and the company’s commitment to resolving the situation.
Numerous popular platforms, including Spotify, Discord, Snapchat, Etsy, UPS, and OpenAI, registered a significant increase in outage reports on DownDetector. Users of these services were actively informed about the disruptions impacting their experiences. Even gaming platforms, such as the Pokemon Trading Card Game and Pokemon Go, were not immune to these issues. Notably, Snapchat has acknowledged the ongoing problems on its support page. OpenAI further communicated that users might encounter difficulties logging in due to “issues affecting multiple external internet providers.” Additionally, AWS saw a spike in outage reports, but Amazon clarified in a statement to Engadget that they had no widespread service issues, emphasizing that their AWS Health Dashboard serves as a more accurate indicator of their service status compared to DownDetector.
As of now, most services have returned to normal operations. By 5 PM ET, Spotify’s main page was accessible for our editors, and reports of outages on DownDetector had significantly decreased, approaching baseline levels. Other platforms like Snapchat and Discord were also operating normally during this time. Google indicated that its products were gradually coming back online across various regions, with expectations for complete recovery within “less than an hour.” However, as of 7:13 PM ET, the company updated that several Google Cloud components were still facing “residual impact.” Key services such as Google Cloud Dataflow, Vertex AI Online Prediction, and Personalized Service Health remain affected, and Google has yet to provide an estimated timeline for when full functionality will be restored.
Daniel Mercer
