You may have noticed something fishy today, Monday 14th December around midday. The vast majority of Google services like YouTube, Gmail, Google Play, Drive Hangouts and much more suffered a major worldwide outage for a little less than an hour. All Google services that require a log in were impacted.
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A spike in use of Google services
The worse finally happened. In a time during which we're all working from home and connected 24/7, the use of Google services has spiked, which may well be the cause the outage.
Mathieu Menut, the lead developper for Numerama suspects that the outage came from Google's authentication systems.
The outage impacted Europe first. It was less noticed in the US due to the time difference.
Back to normal
Google still hasn't made an official statement on the worldwide outage or on the reasons behind it, although it is suspected to be because of the overexploitation of the systems.
Internet users took to Twitter very quickly, as usual. Topics like 'YouTubedown,' 'Google,' or 'Gmail' were trending in a matter of seconds.
It's safe to say that in a world where we are all hyperconnected at all times, some found the situation to be funnier than others.
I’m sitting here in the dark in my toddler’s room because the light is controlled by @Google Home. Rethinking... a lot right now.
— Joe Brown (@joemfbrown) December 14, 2020
