A widespread technology outage on Thursday caused significant disruptions to numerous major platforms, including Google, OpenAI, and Spotify. According to Downdetector.com, a website that tracks service outages, tens of thousands of users reported issues across various services.
The outage began to escalate around 2 p.m. EST and peaked at approximately 2:30 p.m. before gradually subsiding for most affected platforms. Cloudflare, a company providing services to several major corporations impacted by the disruption, reported intermittent failures in some of its services and initiated an investigation.
Cause of the Outage
A spokesperson for Cloudflare attributed the source of the outage to Google Cloud, stating that ‘a limited number of services at Cloudflare use Google Cloud and were impacted.’ The spokesperson reassured that core Cloudflare services remained unaffected and expected the impacted services to resume shortly. By Thursday evening, Cloudflare’s services were fully restored.
Impact on Google Cloud
Google Cloud’s status page indicated that issues with its platform products began at 2:46 p.m. on Thursday, with over 13,000 reports of disruptions logged on Downdetector.com. By 3:30 p.m., Google Cloud announced that most of its services had been recovered. The company committed to publishing a detailed incident report in the following days.
User Impact and Resolution
The outage affected thousands of users across multiple platforms. Spotify reported 46,000 users experiencing issues as of 3 p.m. on Thursday. By late afternoon, certain platforms, including Spotify and OpenAI, had resumed normal operations. In a community update on Friday, a Spotify moderator confirmed that the problems ‘should now be fixed for everyone.’ OpenAI also stated that all impacted services had been recovered by 4:26 p.m.
Affected Platforms
The technology outage impacted a wide range of platforms, including Discord, Google Meet, Snapchat, Gmail, Google Nest, DoorDash, YouTube, Box, Etsy, Pokémon Trading Card Game, Pokémon Go, Cloudflare, Mailchimp, UPS, FuboTV, Verizon, Vimeo, Shopify, Paramount+, Claude, T-Mobile, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Zoom, and Roblox.
In a blog post on Friday, Cloudflare apologized for the outage, acknowledging responsibility despite the initial cause being attributed to a third-party vendor failure. The company emphasized its responsibility for chosen dependencies and architectural decisions.
