Global Google outage hits Gmail, Spotify, Snapchat; services restored

Google outage had a ripple effect on third-party platforms such as Spotify, Snapchat, and Discord, which rely on tech giant's cloud-managed services and infrastructure

Alphabet Inc’s Google said it has resolved the brief global disruption that affected several of its services, including Gmail, Google Chat, Meet, Calendar, Drive, and Voice. The company confirmed the issue had been resolved for all affected users.

 

“We will publish an analysis of this incident once we have completed our internal investigation,” Google said.

 

Spotify, Discord, Snapchat affected

 

The outage had a ripple effect on third-party platforms such as Spotify, Snapchat, and Discord, which rely on Google’s cloud-managed services and infrastructure, according to media reports.

 

Starting around 2.30 PM ET on Thursday (12.00 AM IST on Friday), users reported widespread outages across major platforms including Gmail, Google Search, Google Maps, Discord, Spotify, Twitch, Snapchat, and Nintendo Switch Online. The disruptions led to a surge in error reports on Down Detector and other monitoring platforms, with over 11,000 reports from India and 10,000 from the United States.

 

AI tools and Google services affected 

Several Google services, including Vertex AI and Google Nest were directly impacted. Third-party platforms that rely on Google Cloud, such as Character.ai, Rocket League, the Pokémon Trading Card Game, and Anthropic’s Claude, also experienced outages.

 

The cascading disruption revealed the extent of dependency on Google’s cloud infrastructure, as numerous AI, gaming, and productivity apps went offline or encountered major service issues. 

 

Cloudflare confirms limited impact

 

Cloudflare, which provides cybersecurity and content delivery services for much of the internet, acknowledged “broad Cloudflare service outages.” In a statement to CNN, a Cloudflare spokesperson said, “This is a Google Cloud outage. A limited number of services at Cloudflare use Google Cloud and were impacted. We expect them to come back shortly.”

Shopify and other internet infrastructure providers also experienced interruptions due to the outage.

 

Outage exposed internet’s infrastructure risks

 

At 1.16 pm PT (1.46 am IST on Friday), Google Cloud engineers announced that they had identified the root cause and implemented mitigation measures. While services gradually resumed across most regions, Google acknowledged lingering performance issues in its “us-central1” zone.

 

Google issued its final “all-clear” update at 9.27 pm ET (6.27 am IST): “All the services are fully recovered from the service issue.” The company said a full analysis would be published following an internal investigation. 

 

Although the disruption has ended, the incident highlighted the internet’s significant reliance on a small number of infrastructure providers. Many users expressed frustration on social media, especially as tools like Google Meet and Gmail went down during working hours.  (With agency inputs)