Google Cloud just took a huge dump on the internet

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If you’re wondering why Spotify is being weird or why you got dumped out of your Rocket League match, join the club. Large chunks of the internet are acting up or just plain inaccessible. That includes huge services like Discord, Spotify, Snapchat, Google, Nest, and more.

The issue? Google Cloud’s Cloud Networking service, which has an unspecified issue that started at 09:53 PST. The end result is that some web pages and services are inaccessible, with a wide range of services all down for the count. Yes, it’s DNS. It’s always DNS.

If you hop over to Downdetector, you’ll notice that all of these services went down at the same time as Google Cloud started to have issues, with pretty much the exact graphs.

It seems that just like earlier outages of Slack, and the colossal outage when Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all went down earlier this year, it’s again network configurations that are the culprit.

Services like Google Cloud are great for companies to spin up extra capacity as they grow, without managing physical server infrastructure. The problem with that reliance on one service is that it can take large chunks of the internet down at a time, like today.

Google’s service page now says that the issue is “partially resolved,” so maybe the internet is working again as intended in your location. However, it could still take some time before Google finds out the root cause and fixes their Google Cloud services, so expect intermittent issues until then.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.