A significant Google Cloud Platform (GCP) outage on Wednesday, June 12, 2025, disrupted a large portion of the internet, taking down major websites, apps, and services relied upon by millions globally. The outage, which lasted several hours, affected everything from e-commerce and entertainment platforms to workplace productivity tools, highlighting the vast dependency on cloud infrastructure.
What Happened?
According to TechCrunch, the outage stemmed from a major issue within Google Cloud’s global networking system. Users began reporting outages around 9:00 AM PT, and by mid-morning, the impact had spread across continents.
- Snapchat
- Spotify
- Discord
- Home Depot
- Duolingo
- Uber’s backend services
- Multiple AI and LLM services
Google’s Response
Google acknowledged the outage in a status update, citing an “ongoing issue with cloud networking.” The company worked to identify the root cause and implement a fix, gradually restoring services over the next few hours.
By 2:30 PM PT, Google reported that the issue had been mitigated for most regions. However, some services experienced lingering latency and connectivity issues throughout the evening.
“We apologize to all customers who were impacted. We are conducting a thorough postmortem to ensure this doesn't happen again,” said a Google Cloud spokesperson.
The Scale of the Impact
- AI developers and startups using Google’s infrastructure for inference saw sudden drops in uptime.
- Retailers depending on Google Cloud for inventory and checkout systems were unable to process orders.
- Streaming and communication platforms experienced mass logouts and connection failures.
- Smart home devices and other IoT products went offline in many households.
Industry Reaction
The outage reignited the conversation around cloud redundancy and decentralization. While cloud providers boast impressive uptime stats, this incident served as a reminder that no provider is immune to failure.
“Companies betting everything on a single cloud vendor need to rethink resilience strategies,” said Sarah Timmons, a cloud infrastructure analyst at Forrester Research. “Multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud architectures are no longer just theoretical — they’re becoming essential.”
What This Means Going Forward
The GCP outage is one of the most disruptive internet incidents in recent memory, drawing comparisons to:
- The 2021 Fastly CDN outage, which took down The New York Times, Reddit, and Amazon.
- The Facebook/Meta global outage of 2021, which lasted over six hours.
FAQs
Q: Was this a cyberattack or a technical error?
A: Google has not reported any signs of a cyberattack. The incident is currently being attributed to a cloud networking configuration issue.
Q: How long did the outage last?
A: Services were disrupted starting around 9:00 AM PT and began recovering by 2:30 PM PT. Some users continued experiencing issues later in the evening.
Q: Which companies were most affected?
A: Apps like Snapchat, Spotify, Discord, and backend systems for services like Uber and Duolingo were among the most widely reported.
Q: What is Google doing to prevent this in the future?
A: Google has initiated a full investigation and plans to implement additional safeguards and redundancy mechanisms based on their findings.
Q: Should companies move away from cloud services?
A: Not necessarily. Instead, experts recommend using multi-cloud strategies or distributed systems to reduce dependency on a single provider.
Conclusion
The June 12 Google Cloud outage was a wake-up call for the internet infrastructure ecosystem. As more businesses migrate to the cloud and integrate advanced technologies like AI, the need for resilience, redundancy, and transparency becomes more critical than ever.
Companies and consumers alike will be watching closely as Google discloses its findings — and hopefully, takes actionable steps to prevent the next major blackout.
