Google Fixes Global Outage That Disrupted Gmail, Google Meet, Spotify, and Discord
Google confirmed on Thursday that it has resolved a global service disruption that temporarily affected a wide range of its services, including Gmail, Google Meet, Google Drive, and Google Calendar. The outage also disrupted third-party platforms such as Spotify, Discord, and Snapchat, which rely on Google Cloud’s infrastructure.
“The issue with Google Chat, Google Meet, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Cloud Search, Google Tasks, and Google Voice has been resolved for all affected users,” Google stated in an official update.
The tech giant added, “We will publish an analysis of this incident once we have completed our internal investigation.”
Outage Timeline and Scope
- Outage began: Around 1:50 p.m. ET
- Google Cloud reports: Peaked at 14,729 U.S. users by 2:32 p.m. ET
- Spotify outages: Hit 46,000 reports at peak
- Discord outages: Peaked at 10,992 reports
By 6:18 p.m. ET, reports dropped significantly, with Spotify outages down to 1,000 and Discord to 200, according to Downdetector.com.
Residual Impacts & Google Cloud’s Response
According to the Google Cloud Status Dashboard, while the majority of services have returned to normal, a few systems were still experiencing minor residual issues. Google’s engineering teams are continuing to monitor performance and stability to ensure full restoration.
Why This Matters: Cloud Dependency at Scale
This outage highlights the global reliance on cloud-managed services. Major platforms like Spotify, Discord, and Snapchat depend on Google Cloud for backend operations, making even short disruptions highly impactful for millions of users.
What’s Next?
Google has promised to release a full postmortem analysis once its internal investigation concludes. Users and enterprise partners await further clarity on the root cause and preventative steps the company will take to avoid future disruptions.
