Google Cloud Services Outage in UK Causes Disruptions

A major outage at Google's cloud services in the UK has caused significant disruptions, affecting millions of customers across various sectors. The issue was attributed to a "power event that occurred on Tuesday at Google's London-based Cloud computing operations.

The problem affected Google's europe-west2-b zone, which is one of its key data centers in Europe. As a result, several critical services were impacted, including those used by courts and banks. For instance, the video system used for remote hearings was not functioning throughout the morning.

Several court hearings were delayed due to the outage, as defendants who are in custody often rely on this system to attend proceedings remotely. Lawyers and other parties also relied on the system, which was unavailable throughout the morning. The failure of these services caused inconvenience and disruption for all involved.

Services at several banks were also severely impacted by the outage, with customers unable to access or send cash through various channels including card payments, cash withdrawals, and transfers. High street lenders such as Lloyds and HSBC, as well as digital bank Revolut, were among those affected.

The Financial Conduct Authority has confirmed it is in contact with Google, seeking more information about the widespread outage that has affected numerous UK businesses and institutions.

Halifax, a subsidiary of Lloyds Bank, reported issues with its online services, including app login problems for some customers, according to updates shared on social media platform X.

Revolut's app was also impacted by the service disruption, which affected various features such as sign-up and sign-in processes, card payments, transfers, ATM withdrawals, and cryptocurrency services. The digital bank assured customers that their funds and data remained safe throughout the outage.

Lloyds Bank initially acknowledged certain online services" were experiencing issues on Tuesday morning but later reported that the root causes had been resolved by the afternoon, with services expected to return to normal soon.

The Google cloud outage had far-reaching consequences, affecting not just banks and financial institutions but also other organizations in the UK. HSBC customers were among those struggling to access their accounts online, prompting the bank to issue an apology for any inconvenience caused.

This incident marks a significant test for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Bank of England, which recently gained powers to regulate Google and other rival cloud services supplying critical infrastructure to UK financial firms. The regulators will be keenly watching how these organizations respond to the outage.

The impact of the Google cloud failure was not limited to just financial institutions; property portal Rightmove, satire website NewsThump, and logistics companies Royal Mail and DPD also reported disruptions. Google has promised a detailed analysis of the incident once its internal investigation is complete.