How did Google, Spotify, YouTube and more go down at once in massive outage?
The problems appeared widespread, affecting vast numbers of users across the world
Users of certain apps will be used to glitches and disruptions to their experience every now and again, but it is pretty rare for what seems like the whole internet to suffer an outage. But this week, that's what happened.
On Thursday (June 12), Google went down, including Google Maps, Google Meet, Google Cloud, and YouTube. Google's Nest security cameras also went offline for some, spelling a pretty major problem for tech bosses.
Third-party websites, which may rely on Google's tools, ran into trouble as a result. That includes Snapchat, Discord, Spotify, the Pokémon trading card game and artificial intelligence tool Character.ai.
Etsy, Shopify, UPS, Roblox and others also seemed to be impacted, according to the Independent.
The issues arose around 7.30pm, with thousands of Google users affected. Downdetector, an independent website which monitors outages worldwide, threw up hundreds of reports across all of Google's most popular platforms.
Google Cloud, Nest and Google Maps appeared to be the worst affected.
Along with Google's servers having problems, it appeared that other platforms such as Cloudflare and Amazon Web Services were also struggling, leaving many unable to access key platforms on the web.
Google's server status hinted at difficulties, with a post added at 8pm BST.
But for a good while, there was no word on what was causing the chaos.
The situation wasn't just confined to the UK, though.
Google suggested on a tracking page that all of its regions had been hit by the problems.
"We're investigating reports of an issue with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Chat, Google Cloud Search, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Meet, Google Tasks and Google Voice," a spokesperson said at the time.
"We will provide more information shortly.
"Our engineers are currently investigating the issue. We apologise to all who are affected by the disruption."
At around 9pm BST, the company announced that it had located the issue and applied a fix.
Complications were still possible and they were in the dark as to when a full recovery would happen, though.
But after two hours, anyone who had been pulling teeth over Google services should have been back online.
"The problem with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Chat, Google Cloud Search, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Meet, Google Tasks and Google Voice has been resolved," the company said in an update.
"We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support."
So, do we know what broke the internet?
Several reports suggest Google Cloud is to blame for the widespread outage.
Again, nothing concrete has come out of the upheaval, but normal order has resumed for now.
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