Google has apologised after an outage in its cloud network disrupted a range of online services, including banks and the courts. The incident, caused by a "power event" in the Europe-west2 region, believed to be London, began late on Monday evening and affected multiple cloud services, causing errors and intermittent network failures.
Impact on Banks and Courts
Revolut, which has millions of UK customers, was among the firms reporting problems. Multiple systems were down or partially unavailable, including card payments, transfers, cash withdrawals, and account sign-ins. More than 1,500 people reported issues with Revolut on Tuesday, according to Downdetector.
HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) also experienced issues with its cloud video platform used for secure video-links to court hearings in England and Wales. At Southwark Crown Court, Mr Justice Bennathan, the judge in the rape and sexual assault trial of Russell Brand, noted "problems with Google" but said it was back up and running.
Recovery and Apology
By early afternoon on Tuesday, Google said services were starting to recover, with full recovery "tentatively" expected by 2pm. In a statement on its service health page, Google said: "A power event caused an outage within europe-west2-b zone. 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."
Google suggested affected customers could "try to migrate their workload impacted to another available location (zone or region)" and said it would provide another update on Tuesday afternoon.
Wider Disruptions
Hundreds of Lloyds Bank and HSBC users also reported issues to Downdetector, along with platforms such as Royal Mail, DPD, and Rightmove. Budgeting app Emma told customers it was down due to the outage, 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."
Halifax, owned by Lloyds Banking Group, responded to a user on X, saying it was "aware some customers are having issues with our app and online", adding: "We're sorry about this and are working hard to fix it."
Google is expected to provide another update on the situation on Tuesday afternoon, with services continuing to recover.
