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A major Google Cloud outage took down swathes of the internet and even Workspace apps - here's what we know

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Google Cloud outage hit many popular websites

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  • Google Cloud outage affected 40 locations, and even Cloudflare
  • Spotify, Discord and more went down, as were some Workspace apps
  • Google blamed a dodgy update for the outage, promises to "do better"

A number of popular websites went offline yesterday after Google Cloud experienced a major outage which saw users unable to access the likes of Spotify, Discord and Cloudflare for some time.

Impacting over 40 locations and 26 services, the outage saw systems go down at 11:46am PT on Thursday, June 12, but by 12:30pm PT, Google reported the issue was mostly resolved, except for the us-central1 (Iowa) Region.

The company claimed it had identified the cause of the issue and that engineering teams were working on a recovery, but some users continued to experience issues at 12:41pm PT.

Although Google Cloud stated the outage started at 11:46am PT, Cloudflare also experienced disruptions from 11:19am PT, blaming Google Cloud for the issues.

Among the popular sites affected were Spotify, Discord, Snapchat, Character.AI, Cursor and Replit. Downdetector also shows spikes in the number of complaints from users trying to access some Google services, like Google Maps and YouTube.

According to the outage tracker, some Workspace apps like Drive, Docs and Meet were also affected by the outage.

"We are deeply sorry for the impact to all of our users and their customers that this service disruption/outage caused. Businesses large and small trust Google Cloud with your workloads and we will do better," the company wrote in its mini incident report.

The report blames an invalid automated quota update to Google Cloud's API management system for the outage, claiming almost full recovery within two hours. However, some delays to restoration continued: "Several products had moderate residual impact (e.g. backlogs) for up to an hour after the primary issue was mitigated and a small number recovering after that."

A full log of the incident is available on Google Cloud's status website, and the company has promised a full report to follow.

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Craig Hale
Craig Hale

With several years’ experience freelancing in tech and automotive circles, Craig’s specific interests lie in technology that is designed to better our lives, including AI and ML, productivity aids, and smart fitness. He is also passionate about cars and the decarbonisation of personal transportation. As an avid bargain-hunter, you can be sure that any deal Craig finds is top value!

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