Google services outages

During four episodes, one in 2018 and three in 2020, Google suffered from severe outages that disrupted a variety of their services. The first was a YouTube outage in October 2018. The second was a Gmail/Google Drive outage in August 2020. The third, in November 2020, affected mainly YouTube, and the fourth, in December 2020, affected most of their services. These outages seemed to be global.

October 2018 YouTube outage

On 16 October 2018, a global outage disrupted YouTube for approximately one hour and 2 minutes, YouTube Music and YouTube TV were affected as well. When users try to open YouTube, the website only shows a blank page without videos. On the app, an error message read, “There was a problem with the network [503].”[1] During the outage, the hashtag #YouTubeDown was trending on Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms.[2] YouTube acknowledged that on Twitter.[3] After 1 hour and 2 minutes of outage, YouTube was fixed.[4]

August 2020 services outage

On 20 August 2020, over a period of approximately six hours, a global outage abruptly disrupted Google's suite of services, including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Meet and Google Voice.[5] The outage is reported to have started around 06:30 UTC. Google acknowledged the worldwide disruption in the G Suite Status Dashboard.[6] Users complained that they were unable to upload files to Gmail, transfer files, and upload files to Google Drive.[7][8] There were also reports that some users were unable to log in to their Gmail accounts.[9] The reason for the technical issue is not publicly known.[10] For users in India, a Gmail outage had occurred one month prior, in July.

November 2020 YouTube/Google TV outage

On 11 November 2020, another outage occurred on YouTube, YouTube Music, YouTube TV, Google TV and Google Play. The outage started at roughly 12:20 UTC. Users experienced problems playing videos, error messages, and errors that caused loading loops. At 04:13 UTC, YouTube gave the all-clear on its Twitter.[11][12][13]

December 2020 services outage

On 14 December 2020, another global outage occurred, affecting authenticated users of most Google services, including Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Play.[14][15] The problem was due to a failure in Google Accounts; services such as YouTube were still accessible with private browsing.[16] Google Workspace Status Dashboard showed all services as operational for approximately 40 minutes before correctly reporting their status as down.[17] The outage started at approximately 11:45 UTC, and Google services were restored around 13:00 UTC.

Google identified the issue as an accidental reduction of capacity on their central user ID management system, causing requests that required OAuth-based authentication to fail; this also included the Google Cloud Platform.[18]

On 15 December 2020, many emails sent to Gmail servers reported a 550 error code, which incorrectly indicates that the email address does not exist.[19]

See also

References
  1. "Google's YouTube suffers a major outage". CNBC. October 16, 2018.
  2. "YouTube down: Major outage prompts outcry on social media". FOX13. October 16, 2018.
  3. "YouTube went down for over an hour during an abrupt worldwide outage". Business Insider. October 17, 2018.
  4. "YouTube was down but now it's back". TechCrunch. Retrieved October 16, 2018.
  5. "Google services including Gmail hit by serious disruption". Sky News. Retrieved August 20, 2020.
  6. "Gmail, Drive, Meet, Other Google Services Facing Global Outage". NDTV Gadgets 360. Retrieved August 20, 2020.
  7. Page, Carly. "Gmail Down: Google Services Suffer Global Outage". Forbes. Retrieved August 20, 2020.
  8. "Google services down globally, Gmail, Drive worst affected". The New Indian Express. Retrieved August 20, 2020.
  9. "Google suffers Gmail and Drive outage worldwide after a week of Australian controversy". NewsComAu. August 20, 2020. Retrieved August 20, 2020.
  10. "Gmail experiencing worldwide service disruption". Daily News. Retrieved August 20, 2020.
  11. Li, Abner (November 12, 2020). "YouTube is currently down amid widespread outage". 9to5Google. Retrieved November 12, 2020.
  12. "After massive outage, YouTube is back online". Android Police. November 12, 2020. Retrieved November 12, 2020.
  13. "YouTube went down around the world, but it's now fixed". November 11, 2020.
  14. Lunden, Ingrid (December 14, 2020). "Gmail, YouTube, Google Docs and other services go down simultaneously in multiple countries". TechCrunch.
  15. McCann, John (December 14, 2020). "YouTube, Gmail, Google Workspace and other services are down". TechRadar.
  16. Hern, Alex (December 14, 2020). "Google suffers global outage with Gmail, YouTube and majority of services affected". The Guardian. Retrieved December 15, 2020.
  17. "Google Workspace Status Dashboard". archive.is. December 14, 2020. Archived from the original on December 14, 2020. Retrieved December 14, 2020.
  18. "Google Cloud Status Dashboard". status.cloud.google.com. Retrieved December 15, 2020.
  19. "Gmail is broken right now, one day after a massive outage (Update: Fixed?)". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 16, 2020.
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