New York, NY — Google Cloud faced significant outages on Thursday afternoon, impacting a variety of online services including popular applications like Spotify, Discord, and Snapchat. The disruptions began around 2 PM ET, prompting widespread reports from users experiencing difficulties accessing these platforms.

By 4:16 PM ET, Google announced that they had identified the cause of the outages and were implementing measures to rectify the situation. The tech giant confirmed that its infrastructure had recovered in most areas, but issues persisted particularly in the us-central1 region. Google’s engineers were actively working to restore full functionality to affected services, although no estimated time for complete recovery was provided.

Various businesses reliant on Google Cloud reported ongoing disruptions. DownDetector logged a spike in user complaints across multiple platforms, including UPS and OpenAI. The latter noted login issues stemming from “problems affecting multiple external internet providers.” Even gaming apps like Pokémon Go and the Pokémon Trading Card Game were also hit by service interruptions.

Despite the challenges, by 5 PM ET, many platforms began to stabilize. Editors observed that Spotify’s main page loaded properly and reported outages on DownDetector had diminished significantly. Snapchat and Discord also showed signs of returning to normal functionality. In their earlier communication, Google had anticipated that recovery would be swift, expecting most services to resume within an hour.

However, by 7:13 PM ET, Google indicated that some components of Google Cloud were still experiencing lingering effects from the outage. Services like Google Cloud Dataflow and Vertex AI Online Prediction were among those that remained partially affected. The company has yet to specify a timeline for when full functionality across all platforms would be restored.

The incident underscores the critical reliance many businesses have on cloud services and the cascading effects outages can have on various sectors. As companies work to ensure the resilience of their online services, today’s disruptions serve as a reminder of the vulnerabilities inherent in digital infrastructures.