Massive Google Cloud Outage Nukes Snapchat, Gmail, & YouTube

CCN: Around 3:25 pm ET, a massive chunk of the internet went dark. Google Cloud appears to be the source of the problems. This has led to outages for YouTube, Discord, Google Photos, Search, News, Analytics, Gmail, and various other services. It’s not just Google’s own applications either. Snapchat, among other services hosted by Google, is also experiencing difficulties.

The internet is slowly breaking down because Google is having issues with multiple services, including their own Cloud Network: “Multiple services reporting issues” #Gmail #GoogleAnalytics #YouTube #Calendar #APIs #Cloud #Google pic.twitter.com/qTk0i24YvC

— Jordi (@JordiFun) June 2, 2019

The Verge reported that the problems are mostly located on the US East Coast. However, Twitter users have reported outages ranging from Europe to Brazil. Google has acknowledged that there is a problem with the Google Cloud Platform and is working on it:

“We are currently encountering a cloud networking issue throughout all Google Cloud Platform, this is affecting all products currently. Mitigation work is currently underway by our Engineering Team.” pic.twitter.com/4fozekMIDa

— Steve Lookner (@lookner) June 2, 2019

Speculation Runs Rampant Amid Crippling Google Outage

At the time of this writing, it’s unclear if Google is suffering from routine problems or something more serious. Given all the cybersecurity news and threats recently, some folks in the tin-foil hat crowd are suggesting that Huawei or another Chinese entity may be mounting a cyber attack as the trade war heats up.

Additionally, more than a few people have noted the suspicious timing of Google’s outage. Remember that on Friday, news broke that the Department of Justice is planning antitrust enforcement action against the company.

Destroying evidence?

— Texarkana Fed 🇺🇸 (@TexarkanaFed) June 2, 2019

Storm Clouds: Centralization Causes Risk

Google’s outage is another reminder that we run a great risk in centralizing so much of our data on just a few cloud platforms. If anything knocks them offline, we face increasingly dire consequences. Sure, it’s inconvenient to have Gmail or Youtube down for a while. But there’s a darker side to this. For example, Nest, which is responsible for connected homes, is down.

Why is @googlenest still down?! I can’t see my kids as they nap. #sev1 #takingtoolong

— Marcus (@audiyos_) June 2, 2019

People rely on Nest to do everything from managing their security cameras to watching their children when they are away from home. It’s frightening that an outage at Google, be it an ordinary error or an alarming cyber attack, can take these vital services down.

One Google Service Is Still Online

As Zerohedge noted, however, there are no worries if you own Google stock. The most important Google service is – surprise, surprise – still running fine:

google cloud is down
google compute engine is down
gmail is down
google drive is down
nest is down
youtube is down
snapchat is down
uber is down
nextDNS is down
Pokemon Go is down
App Engine is down
…
google advertising up

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 2, 2019