Today, Google Cloud experienced significant outages that disrupted numerous online services, affecting both Google products and various third-party applications. Reports of issues began to surface around 2 PM ET, leading to widespread concern among users who rely on these services for their daily activities.
In a timely update at 4:16 PM ET, Google announced that they had identified the root cause of the disruptions and implemented appropriate mitigations. The company confirmed that their infrastructure had recovered in all regions, except for us-central1. Despite this, several Google Cloud products that depend on the affected infrastructure were still experiencing recovery challenges in multiple locations.
Google engineers are actively working to resolve the issues for customers still facing difficulties in the us-central1 and multi-region/us areas. However, the company has not provided an estimated time of arrival (ETA) for full recovery, leaving users uncertain about when normal operations will resume.
The outages had a ripple effect on a variety of popular platforms, with reports from Spotify, Discord, Snapchat, Etsy, UPS, and OpenAI flooding in to DownDetector. Users across these platforms reported disruptions, with some services informing their users about ongoing issues. Notably, even the Pokemon Trading Card Game and Pokemon Go experienced connectivity problems.
Snapchat acknowledged the ongoing issues on its support page, while OpenAI informed users that they may encounter difficulties logging in due to problems affecting multiple external internet providers. This widespread impact highlights the interconnected nature of modern online services.
During the Google Cloud outage, AWS also observed a higher-than-usual volume of reports on DownDetector. However, Amazon clarified in a statement to Engadget that there were no broad service issues on their end. They emphasized that their AWS Health Dashboard is a more accurate indicator of service status than third-party monitoring tools like DownDetector.
As of 5 PM ET, many services began to return to normal operation. Reports indicated that Spotify's main page was accessible again, and outage reports on DownDetector had decreased significantly. Other platforms, including Snapchat and Discord, also appeared to be functioning normally for many users.
At that time, Google stated that its products were gradually coming back online across various regions and anticipated that full recovery would be achieved within an hour. However, as of 7:13 PM ET, Google noted that several Google Cloud components were still experiencing residual impacts, including Google Cloud Dataflow, Vertex AI Online Prediction, and Personalized Service Health. Unfortunately, the company has yet to provide a definitive timeline for when all services will be fully restored.
The situation remains dynamic, and users are encouraged to stay updated through official channels for the latest information on the recovery of Google Cloud services and related platforms.
