A huge internet outage disrupted major online services on Thursday, affecting platforms like Google, Spotify, Discord, and Snapchat.
The problem was traced back to technical issues with Google Cloud, which provides infrastructure for many websites and apps worldwide.
Users reported problems with Google services including Gmail, Maps, Search, Meet, and Nest, according to tracking website Down Detector.
Popular platforms such as Discord, Spotify, Snapchat, and even the Pokémon trading card game also went offline for many users.
Other websites like Etsy, Shopify, UPS, and Roblox were affected too, though some services like Cloudflare said they were not directly hit.
Google Cloud’s official status page confirmed widespread issues across all its regions, disrupting third-party services that depend on its tools.
The problems started around 2pm US Eastern Time. Google said it was aware of the issue, but a full recovery took several hours.
By 4pm Eastern Time, Google claimed it had found the root cause and applied a fix, though some users still experienced problems.
Google apologised to affected users but gave no specific details on what exactly went wrong during the outage.
Social media lit up with frustrated posts as people found their favourite apps offline or unusable for much of the afternoon.
One user on X wrote: “How is everything down? Google, AWS, Cloudflare… is this the end of the internet?”
Another joked: “I can’t even work – Google Drive is down. What now?”
The incident highlighted just how much of the internet depends on a few key infrastructure providers.
