Google Cloud down: GCP outage explained

If you noticed some of your favorite sites aren't working this afternoon, you're not alone. It seems like practically the entire internet is down, including Google Cloud, OpenAI, Twitch, Discord, Nintendo, and Spotify.

Down Detector, a platform where users can report errors and other problems, showed a widespread spike in problems. (Disclosure: Down Detector is owned by Mashable's parent company Ziff Davis.) And on social media platforms like X, users also shared their frustration.

On the Google Cloud status page, the service admitted to "service issues" at 2:46 p.m. ET. According to the most recent updates at 3:41 p.m. ET and 4:16 p.m. ET, engineers “have identified the root cause and have applied appropriate mitigations.” However, the company also noted that they don’t have an ETA for full recovery.

Meanwhile, a Google Cloud representative provided this statement to Mashable: "We are currently investigating a service disruption to some Google Cloud services."

The Google Cloud status page states that affected areas include regions all across Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America.

What is Google Cloud?

Google Cloud is a popular cloud hosting service. Because it provides hosting for a variety of other services, websites, and apps, an outage with Google Cloud Products (GCP) could cause major ripple effects across the digital ecosystem.

This story is developing and we'll update it with more information...