Update: It looks like various services are starting to come back again, but with some glitches (such as the address bar in Gmail not working correctly). A Google spokesperson has now provided us directly with a statement about the outage:
Today, at 3.47AM PT Google experienced an authentication system outage for approximately 45 minutes due to an internal storage quota issue. Services requiring users to log in experienced high error rates during this period. The authentication system issue was resolved at 4:32AM PT. All services are now restored. We apologise to everyone affected, and we will conduct a thorough follow up review to ensure this problem cannot recur in the future.
In all, it looks like a huge range of Google services were down for about an hour today. That hour crossed into business operation times in multiple markets, leading to a slight drop in pre-market trading for parent company Alphabet.
It’s also an alarming reminder of just how far Google reaches, and how many of our services — productivity, entertainment and home/utility — are tied up with a single, proprietary provider. Coincidentally, Microsoft’s Outlook is also experiencing some problems, too.
Microsoft’s Outlook also faces intermittent outage, amid crash across multiple Google services
Original article below:
Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025
Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444.
Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025
Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444.
Not much more to update yet but we’re seeing and getting word from others that multiple Google services have gone down. Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, Google Docs, Maps, AdWords and AdSense, Google Pay, Google Home, Nest and Google’s Chromecast are all experiencing outages, with dozens, even hundreds, of reports we’ve seen so far coming in from across Europe, the U.S., Canada, India, South Africa, countries in Central and South America, Australia and likely more.
Downtime site indicators are showing big spikes for services dropping starting from around 11.30AM U.K. time.
Google.com itself appears to still be working, albeit sluggishly. Ditto Chrome.
Some have surmised that it’s an issue with Google Accounts — which is also not working — or a wider authentication issue. When everything was down, even if you tried to use Google services incognito they were not working.
So far we aren’t seeing any explanations for what is going on — please get in touch if you know something, I’m on Twitter here, and I also read direct messages and replies. No point in emailing me!
Mainly, though, it’s an unprecedented failure for a system that has grown to be one of the biggest traffic and activity drivers on the internet with billions of users across Google’s different properties.
The time I realized how much I depend on Google.
— Vlad 🍩 (@v_lugovsky) December 14, 2020
We’ll update as we learn more.
