Major online services like Spotify, Discord, and Google Cloud were disrupted Thursday, with outages traced to a Google Cloud service issue.
Massive Outage Disrupts Major Online Platforms
On Thursday afternoon, June 13, widespread internet service disruptions impacted thousands of users across popular platforms including Spotify, Google Cloud, and Discord. According to outage monitoring site Downdetector, the peak of the disruption saw over 46,000 Spotify users, 14,000 Google Cloud users, and 11,000 Discord users reporting issues. The interruptions also affected services like Snapchat and Character.ai.
Root Cause Traced to Google Cloud Disruption
The outages were linked to a technical failure within Google Cloud, one of the world’s largest cloud computing providers. Cloudflare, a global content delivery and internet infrastructure company, confirmed the issue stemmed from a Google Cloud outage. “A limited number of services at Cloudflare use Google Cloud and were impacted,” the company said in a statement.
Service Providers Respond to Outage Reports
Google acknowledged the disruption in a brief public statement: “We are currently investigating a service disruption to some Google Cloud services,” a spokesperson said. While Amazon Web Services was initially mentioned in outage reports, AWS confirmed its systems were operating normally. Spotify representatives directed media inquiries to Google’s public status dashboard, signaling Google Cloud as the source of the issue.
Recovery Efforts Underway as Services Resume
By Thursday evening, Cloudflare reported gradual recovery across its affected services, including its Workers KV data storage tool. Downdetector also showed a decline in outage reports from affected platforms. Google’s Cloud status page continued to post live updates as engineers worked to resolve lingering service degradation.
Impact Underscores Web’s Cloud Dependency
The incident highlights the growing dependence on cloud service providers to support the global digital infrastructure. Google Cloud handles roughly 12% of the world’s cloud computing needs, trailing behind Amazon Web Services (30%) and Microsoft Azure (21%), according to Synergy Research Group. In 2018, Google claimed its infrastructure delivered 25% of worldwide internet traffic.
Not the First, and Likely Not the Last
While Thursday’s outage was disruptive, it is not without precedent. Major cloud outages have previously paralyzed web traffic—including a 2021 AWS failure and a Cloudflare incident in 2020. More recently, services like ChatGPT and X (formerly Twitter) have also experienced brief but noticeable disruptions. As more global platforms rely on centralized cloud systems, the ripple effect of any service failure continues to grow.
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