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A major Google Cloud outage on Thursday caused multiple online services and platforms to go offline, disrupting the internet experience for users around the world.
The outage affected major apps like Spotify, Discord, Snapchat, Character.AI, and even developer tools like Cursor and Replit. The issue quickly became apparent through user reports on DownDetector, which showed a surge in service disruptions beginning late Thursday morning (PT).
Google Cloud Investigates and Mitigates
Google Cloud acknowledged the issue and began looking into it at 11:46 a.m. PT, according to a statement from company spokesperson Devon Smiley, who said, “We are currently investigating a service disruption to some Google Cloud services.”
By 2:23 p.m. PT, Google reported it had implemented mitigation steps and expected services to be fully restored within the hour.
Cloudflare, which uses Google Cloud for certain functions, also reported service disruptions. At 11:19 a.m. PT, Cloudflare posted an update on its status page, confirming issues that affected some customers.
However, Cloudflare spokesperson Ripley Park clarified that the core services remained functional, stating, “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.”
Platforms like Spotify confirmed they were closely monitoring the situation, with spokesperson Shira Rimini saying they were watching “Google Cloud’s status page for more updates.” Meanwhile, other cloud providers were unaffected.
Additionally, Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported no issues, and Microsoft Azure had not posted any outage notifications on its official channels.
The outage began around 11 a.m. PT, affecting users in the middle of the workday across the U.S. and beyond. While large-scale cloud outages often lead to ripple effects, these issues are typically resolved within a few hours.
Google’s latest update suggests that full recovery is expected shortly, and many services have already started to come back online.
