Google has apologised after a major outage in its cloud computing infrastructure caused widespread disruption across the UK, knocking financial platforms, court systems, delivery services, and major consumer apps offline.
The tech giant confirmed that a "power event" triggered an outage within its europe-west2-b zone, a key London-based cloud region, starting late Monday evening (October 19). The incident resulted in elevated error rates and intermittent network failures across multiple Google Cloud services.
By early Tuesday afternoon (October 20), Google stated that the power event had been mitigated and systems were beginning to recover, with a full tentative restoration expected by 2pm.
Google's statement and initial impact
"A power event caused an outage within europe-west2-b zone," Google stated on its service health page. "The power event is mitigated. We are seeing the recovery of services and are prioritising the recovery of existing workloads."
"Customers may not be able to yet create new workloads. We apologise to all who are affected by the disruption," they added.
Digital banking giant Revolut, which serves millions of UK customers, was among the most heavily impacted platforms. Outage tracking site Downdetector recorded over 1,500 issue reports for Revolut on Tuesday morning, with users experiencing problems signing into accounts, transferring money, making cash withdrawals, and completing card payments.
Banking and app disruptions
A spokesperson for Revolut sought to reassure customers regarding security: "We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services. We can confirm that all our customers' money and data are safe."
They added: "We've been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologise to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused."
Major high-street lenders Lloyds Bank and HSBC, alongside Lloyds-owned Halifax, also experienced user-reported service hiccups. Halifax responded to customers via social media, acknowledging online and app disruption while technical teams worked on fixes.
Personal budgeting app Emma confirmed its downtime was directly tied to Google's London infrastructure, posting on X: "Emma is currently down due to a Google Cloud outage affecting services in London since 7am. This is a technical outage, not a security issue. We're monitoring closely and will update here as soon as the app is back. Sorry for the disruption."
Courts and delivery services affected
The outage extended beyond finance into public sector and logistical infrastructure. HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) experienced downtime on its Cloud Video Platform (CVP), which handles secure video-link feeds for judicial hearings in England and Wales.
At Southwark Crown Court in London, Mr Justice Bennathan, presiding over the trial of Russell Brand, noted there had been "problems with Google" before connections were successfully restored. Observers and journalists reported video services coming back online shortly after Google's midday status update.
Delivery providers Royal Mail and DPD, alongside property portal Rightmove, also registered service spikes and connectivity disruptions throughout the morning according to Downdetector.
Recovery and workaround
As a temporary workaround during the incident, Google recommended that affected business customers attempt to migrate impacted workloads to alternative available regions or zones.
While existing workloads are being restored in order of priority, Google noted that customers might still experience temporary restrictions when creating new workloads. Further status updates from Google Cloud engineering teams are expected as full stability is re-established.
