Google Cloud services across Europe were disrupted for hours after a “power event” at a data centre based in London, according to the tech giant’s website.
The issue reportedly affected banks and other websites across the continent, with institutions in the UK hit hardest.
Users reported struggling to log into their mobile banking while court live streams failed across Britain.
The Google Cloud website said that the incident was isolated to a data centre in London, adding that services in parts of Europe were experiencing “elevated errors and intermittent network issues”.
“Due to a power event we had suffered an outage within europe-west2-b zone,” the Google Cloud website said.
Google said the incident began shortly after 6am UK time, with disruption reported well into the afternoon.
Customers of major UK banks were reporting issues accessing their accounts. (Reuters: Phil Noble)
The tech giant said it would now carry out an internal investigation into the incident.
Banking giant Revolut is among the institutions believed to have been affected by the outage.
“We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services,” the bank said in a statement on social media.
“We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe.”
Another major British bank, Halifax, wrote on X that customers were “having issues with our app and online”.
Brand trial live stream affected
The outage affected everything from e-bike rental services to budgeting apps, British media reported.
Court live streams, including that of the ongoing trial of comedian Russell Brand, were also reportedly down as a result.
“We’re aware of an issue affecting Cloud Video Platform (CVP), used for some remote hearings,” the UK’s Courts and Tribunals Service said on X.
The outage appears to have disrupted live streams of court cases, including the high-profile trial of British comedian Russell Brand. (Reuters: Jack Taylor)
British media outlets reported that other major companies, including Royal Mail, Microsoft and delivery company DPD were also experiencing issues.
Google Cloud later said on its website that the server had been restored and it would publish an analysis of the event once its internal investigation had concluded.
“The issue with impacted GCP products has been mitigated for most of the customers and it is believed to be affecting currently a very small number of customers and our Engineering Team is working on it.”
ABC/wires
Source: www.abc.net.au
