Regardless of Google’s fame for reliability, outages are nothing new. Whether or not brought on by software program updates, networking points, or – much less often – knowledge middle fires, outages throughout Google Companies may cause severe disruption for customers.
Right here’s a timeline of serious Google outages, analyzing the incidents’ causes, affect, and Google’s response:
April 2023: Google’s Wet Day in Paris
In April 2023, Google Cloud confronted a difficult day of floods, a knowledge middle hearth, and different Google Cloud Networking issues, inflicting service disruptions throughout a number of service areas. Learn extra
August 2022: Google Data Center Hearth
On August 8, 2022, an electrical incident induced a fireplace at Google’s knowledge middle campus in Council Bluffs, Iowa, injuring three workers. The fireplace occurred on the identical day as outages of the corporate’s maps and search service, though Google stated the 2 incidents had been unrelated. Learn extra
Inside a Google knowledge middle (Picture: Google)
July 2022: Google Data Centers Knocked Offline by London Warmth
In July 2022, temperatures in London reached 40 levels Celsius. Google and Oracle skilled points with their cooling programs within the warmth, inflicting outages and knocking some web sites offline. Learn extra
December 2020: Google Companies Together with Gmail, YouTube Undergo Main Outage
Google’s outage in December 2020 affected Gmail, YouTube, Pokémon GO, Google Dwelling, and different merchandise globally. Whereas outages are usually not unusual, this particular outage was notable for its affect throughout the Alphabet portfolio. The vast majority of affected companies had been returned to performance inside an hour. Learn extra
July 2018: Google Cloud Disruption Brings Snapchat, Spotify Down
In July 2018, fashionable apps, together with Snapchat and Spotify, briefly went down after a failure of Google’s cloud-computing companies. Whereas it was initially unclear what had induced the outage, there have been experiences of an incident on the Google Cloud Standing Dashboard. Learn extra
November 2017: Data Center Failover Error Kicks Google Cloud Companies Offline
Memcache – a part of Google App Engine – went down in November 2017. With Memcache being unavailable, requests went to the Datastore service, making a surge of exercise resulting in errors and latency points. Learn extra
August 2016: Google Explains What Went Mistaken to Trigger PaaS Outage
On August 11, 2016, a two-hour outage on Google App Engine affected 37% of purposes hosted in its US Central area. Google blamed the incident on a site visitors router software program replace triggering a rolling restart throughout normal periodic upkeep, which concerned engineers shifting purposes between knowledge facilities. The decreased router capability finally led to overloading, and Google’s handbook site visitors redirection was not sufficient to resolve the issue till a configuration error inflicting a site visitors imbalance was recognized and stuck. Learn extra
April 2016: Google Reimburses Cloud Purchasers After Google Compute Engine Outage
An 18-minute outage in April 2016 affected Google Cloud Engine customers throughout a number of areas. After the incident, Google claimed its engineering groups could be engaged on “a broad array of prevention, detection and mitigation programs meant so as to add further protection,” and it reimbursed customers as much as 25% of their month-to-month costs. Learn extra
August 2015: Lightning in Belgium Disrupts Google Cloud Companies
In August 2015, a collection of lightning strikes in Belgium knocked some cloud storage programs offline. Experiences had initially acknowledged that lightning had struck electrical programs at one in all its knowledge facilities within the small city of St Ghislain, however a spokesperson later confirmed a neighborhood utility grid had been hit. Learn extra
March 2015: Google Traces Cloud Outage to Defective Patch
In March 2015, for the second time in a month, Google Compute Engine suffered an outage, with some customers experiencing disruptions for as much as 45 minutes. It was a partial outage, that means some customers weren’t impacted, some noticed a slowdown, whereas others skilled points contacting their cloud VMs. Google recognized a patch downside as having induced the problems. The configuration change was examined earlier than deployment however affected some VMs when dwell. Learn extra
February 2015: Google Compute Engine, AOL Undergo Early Morning Outages
February 19, 2015, noticed two outages on the identical day: Google Compute Engine was down throughout a number of areas for round an hour, and AOL skilled an prolonged outage that lasted a lot of the morning. Google blamed the Google Compute Engine incident on community points, which induced connectivity loss throughout many zones. AOL’s e mail service was resolved after a morning of points, with AOL gradual to reveal the reason for the issue – some claimed there had been a community situation. Learn extra
October 2014: A number of Google Cloud Companies Expertise Downtime
Google Cloud Companies customers skilled points with Gmail, Google Hangouts, Google Analytics, and Google e mail safety service Postini in October 2014. Whereas the incident affected the vast majority of customers, it was resolved comparatively shortly. Learn extra
January 2014: Gmail Internet App Outage
On January 24, 2014, the broadly used app Gmail went down because of an inner bug producing an “incorrect configuration.” Learn extra
December 2012: Load Balancer Misbehavior Cited in Google Outage
In December 2012, an incident report confirmed the reason for a latest Gmail outage to be a software program replace that induced a networking situation, particularly in Google’s load balancers. Google defined {that a} “bug within the software program replace induced it to incorrectly interpret a portion of Google knowledge facilities as being unavailable.” The outage had induced points for customers accessing Gmail, and plenty of Chrome customers additionally skilled browser crashes. Learn extra
February 2010: When the Energy Goes Out at Google
After an influence outage in February 2010, Google shared a collection of steps it could be taking to handle the incident. Google dedicated to further scheduled drills for on-call employees, common audits of operations paperwork, a transparent coverage framework for emergencies, and a serious infrastructure change in App Engine. The outage had induced greater than two hours of downtime for Google App Engine. Learn extra
September 2009: Router Ripples Cited in Gmail Outage
On September 1, 2009, a Gmail outage meant customers had been unable to entry Gmail by way of the online interface. Google acknowledged that the trigger was its underestimating the load that routine upkeep on some Gmail servers would place on supporting routers. Google fastened the issue by bringing further routers on-line and stated it then elevated Gmail’s router capability and is taking additional steps to keep away from a repeat of the incident. Learn extra
July 2009: Google App Engine Hit By Outage
On July 2, 2009, Google App Engine skilled excessive latency and error charges, inflicting hours of efficiency points – all purposes accessing the Datastore had been affected. Learn extra
Could 2009: Rolling Outage for Google
On Could 14, 2009, an error in one in all Google’s programs induced site visitors to be directed by Asia, making a site visitors jam. The incident affected about 14% of customers, with points reported on Google Information, Gmail, and Google Calendar, amongst different companies. Learn extra
February 2009: Gmail Outage Centered on European Community
A Gmail outage on February 24, 2009, was brought on by disruptions in its European knowledge facilities. Sudden points with a software program replace resulted in over two hours of downtime for Gmail customers. Learn extra
August 2008: Gmail Service Outage
August 11, 2008, additionally noticed a Gmail service outage: many Gmail customers had been unable to entry their e mail because of a problem within the contacts system utilized by Google that prevented Gmail from loading correctly. Learn extra
June 2008: Google App Engine Outage
On June 17, 2008, Google App Engine, the utility computing platform for builders, skilled a number of prolonged outages throughout which a major proportion of requests resulted in errors. The errors had been associated to the Datastore. Learn extra
