ENDED · The Guardian · 48 updates
UK unemployment rate falls in pre-budget boost, but firms keep cutting vacancies – business live
Google Cloud outage: problems fixed for ‘most‘ customers, as regulators push for details – as it happened
Live updates, newest first
Reynolds: Chinese EV decision will depend on UK interests
Business secretary Johnny Reynolds has insisted any decision to impose tariffs on Chinese EVs will be about British, not EU interests. He told the business select committee that some were under the misapprehension that the EU wanted the UK to put tariffs on EVs because they feared the Chinese could…
Google Cloud outage: A summary
Time to recap… A power outage at a Google Cloud data centre near London has caused serious failures to services today, affecting operations for several UK banks. Problems were first detected just after 7am this morning, disrupting “multiple services” in Google’s europe-west2 region (London). Google…
theguardian.com
Google: We'll publish an analysis of what went wrong
Google add that it does not plan to provide further updates about the outage on its Service Health page – another sign that it thinks it has pretty much resolved the problem with its cloud services today. It adds: We will publish an analysis of this incident once we have completed our internal inve…
Google: issue has been mitigated for most customers
Newsflash: Google has declared that it has won, pretty much, its battle against today’s tech outage at its London-based cloud computing systems. In an updated status message, Google says: Multiple services were experiencing issues in the europe-west2 region. The shift to the past tense is significa…
Royal Mail has said it was aware of the issues caused to its services by the Google Cloud outage, and added that there was no effect on letter and parcel deliveries. Not that those deliveries are always good enough! Businesss secretary Johnny Reynolds has said he has summoned Royal Mail bosses in f…
Lloyds: expect services to get back to normal soon
Lloyds Banking Group, which includes Halifax, is hopeful that services will be restored soon. A spokesperson for Lloyds tells us: “We understand the root issues have been resolved, so we expect to all our services back to normal soon.”
UK regulators want answers from Google about Cloud outage
The Financial Conduct Authority and Bank of England are pushing Google for details of today’s cloud services outage, as they face their first major test as new regulators of “critical” tech suppliers to UK banks. Both the FCA and Bank of England were handed powers in July to start directly overseei…
Low-paid workers and hospitality firms face disruption
The failure of banking apps due to the Google Cloud outage could disproportionately affect those most struggling with the cost of living, argues audit, tax and business advisory firm Blick Rothenberg. Blick Rothenberg partner Andrew Sanford explains: “Weekly or fortnightly paid employees, often tho…
Affected companies coming back online again
There are signs that the companies affected by Google’s outage are getting online again. Emma, the personal finance, budgeting, and money management app which was taken down by the Google Cloud outage (see 10.11am), has posted on X that it is operating again. Emma says: We’re back ✅ Emma is up and…
Google: We are seeing the recovery of services for most workloads
Newsflash: Google says service are being restored in its London-based cloud region after today’s outage. The company says: “We are seeing the recovery of services for most workloads in europe-west2.” This isn’t the end of the story, though – Google are promising another update by 3pm UK time.
reuters.com
Google added that they will provide an update by 06:00 PDT (2pm BST) with “current details” of the situation.
Google: The power event is mitigated
Newsflash: Google says the ‘power event’ which affected its London-based cloud computing operating and caused widepread disruption to services in the UK has been ‘mitigated’. In a new statement on its Service Health page, Google reports seeing signs that services are being restored. It says: A powe…
bbc.com
The Google Cloud outage could result in some companies losing sales, and they might struggle to get much compensation, suggests Ryan Gracey, partner at law firm Gordons. “Many businesses will be discovering today that their cloud contracts protect the supplier far more than they protect the custome…
Google: power event disrupted our Cloud services
Google are blaming a ‘power event’ for the disruption at its London-based Cloud computing operations today. In an update on its status page, Google says: Due to a power event we had suffered an outage within europe-west2-b zone. The power event is mitigated. Partial mitigation to infrastructure ser…
france24.com
PA: Court hearings delayed as nationwide video system goes down
The video system used by courts across England and Wales went down on Tuesday in an issue believed to be linked to the wider Google outage, the Press Association report. The Cloud Video Platform (CVP), which is used by defendants, lawyers and other parties to attend court hearings remotely, was not…
The nature of cloud ecosystems mean that a problem in one region can ripple out and cause widesread disruption. Dr Amro Al-Said Ahmad, lecturer in computer science at Keele University, explains: “Another outage, another reminder of the fragility of cloud infrastructure. Google Cloud is currently ex…
A Lloyds spokesperson has confirmed the bank (which includes Halifax) has experienced problems today: “Our app is online and customers can log in normally, though we understand some are having issues with certain online services this morning. We are aware of similar issues affecting other organisat…
Google’s latest update on its Cloud outage reiterates what we knew already. It says: We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption. Symptoms Multiple Google Cloud services are experiencing elevated errors and intermittent network failures in europe-west2 region. Note: Looker Studio is not…
the-independent.com
ESET: cloud services are a 'huge point of failure'
Today’s Google Cloud outage comes exactly 12 months after rival Amazon suffered serious disruption at its cloud computing arm. Now, as then, it’s a reminder of the perils of relying on a small number of companies for operating the global internet, especially as more and more services have been move…
We’re expecting another update from Google by noon UK time (4am PST).
The Register: Royal Mail, DPD, BT, Cloudflare and Screwfix also affected
Other companies affected by the Google Cloud outage include Royal Mail, DPD, BT, Cloudflare and Screwfix (on top of the companies we’ve already covered), according to tech news site The Register. El Reg (as they’re affectionately known) adds: Techies on Reddit said the interruption was having a cas…
Some Halifax customers are finding they cannot log into their banking appp right now – and receive this error message instead:
Halifax: some customers are having issues with our app and online
Halifax, which is part of Lloyds Banking Group, has confirmed some customers are having problems today. Posting on X, Halifax says: We’re aware some customers are having issues with our app and online. We’re sorry about this and are working hard to fix it. If you need to you can still call us. We’l…
There are also reports that Rightmove has been affected by the Google Cloud outage. Rightmove certainly uses Google Cloud for its new artificial intelligence services – including a new AI-powered Comparison Assistant launched earlier this month. It has also been developing a AI-powered conversation…
NewsThump, the satire and spoof news website, has been thumped by the Google Cloud outage – its site currently won’t load. It says: NewsThump has been down since 7am due to a major outage in the Google Cloud infrastructure (no, we don’t really understand that either). We have satirists chomping at…
Google suggests a workaround
Google has updated its advice to those affected by its service disruption, with a possible workaround. It says: If feasible, the impacted customer may try to migrate their workload impacted to another available location (zone or region).
“A person familiar with the matter” has told Reuters that Revolut’s service outage was related to the Google Cloud service disruption (as we speculated a little while ago…)
There are also some reports of problems with other UK financial services firms today – perhaps a sign that the Google Cloud outage is causing wider problems. These chart from DownDetector show a rise in problems being reported by users of HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group this morning:
The service disruption at Google Cloud began just after 7am this morning UK time, or 23:08pm Pacific time last night. The disruption is focused at Google’s europe-west2 region, which is London. Other sites, such as Paris and Frankfurt, are not reporting problems.
theregister.com
Ticket sales are also being disrupted by the Google Cloud outage, according to Hertfordshire-based football club Hitchin Town. Hitchin Town (known as the Canaries) in soccer circles, say: There is currently a Europe wide issue with Google Cloud which hosts our ticketing site with @KaizenTicketing A…
