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Google Cloud Disrupts Several Google Applications, Affecting Millions of Users

Cloud

Business Honor
16 June, 2025

Google Cloud API issues affected Google apps and third-party platforms like Spotify and Cloudflare.

Several Google applications and known third-party platforms worldwide had issues following a major disruption in Google Cloud recently. Issue began and lasted for over three hours, affecting millions of users.

According to Google, its API management system is the cause behind the issue. Many external requests to the API failed and received error code 503 as a consequence of an incorrect automated quota update that was issued worldwide. As the system lacked sufficient testing and error management, this issue was first unnoticed.

Google temporarily bypassed the incorrect quota check to resolve the issue, allowing a majority of areas to be restored in two hours. Despite this, higher recovery times occurred in the US-central1 area because of an overcrowded quota database. When the main issue was resolved, some services continued to experience delays for an hour.

Major Google applications such as Gmail, Chat, Docs, Calendar, Drive, Meet, Voice, Lens, and Cloud Search had been affected by the disruption. In addition, several third-party platforms like Spotify, Discord, Snapchat, NPM, Firebase Studio, and some Cloudflare services had also been disrupted.

Cloudflare stated that the main reason for their interrupted services was Google Cloud. Claiming no data was lost and that the disruption wasn't caused by a safety problem. The delay affected their workers' KV service, which is important for delivery and installation. Cloudflare aims to reduce its dependence on foreign cloud providers by shifting their KV central store to their own R2 object storage to avoid similar issues. This incident shows the rising interdependence and complexity of cloud services in the future.