Google Cloud stopped working after a ‘power event’ caused a major outage across Europe
Good morning. Well, maybe not so good for Google Cloud, which has confirmed that it is suffering from problems across Europe.
On its status page, the company confirmed that it was seeing that “Multiple services are experiencing issues in the Europe-West region2.”
The issues were confirmed at 10.24am BST/02.24am PST, so it could be a busy day for Google workers…
DownDetector is showing a big increase in user reports that something is wrong with Google Cloud, although the numbers appear to have decreased slightly.
As the technological backbone of many other companies, Google Cloud’s problem may well be affecting a variety of customers.
DownDetector is showing some spikes for other companies that appear to mirror its own pattern, with several major banking apps, including Revolut and Lloyds Bank in the UK, apparently affected.
You can follow TechRadar’s coverage of that outage in our separate live blog here.
Google Cloud’s own status page also doesn’t offer a pretty display, with many orange alerts showing that several systems are down and that many regions in Europe are affected.
Affected services include critical business tools such as BigQuery, App Engine, Looker, SQL, and many more…
After a slight drop in DownDetector reports, things are back up slightly.
On its status page, Google Cloud promised an update soon, noting:
“We are experiencing an issue with multiple services on europe-west2 as of Monday, October 19, 2026 at 23:08 PDT.
Our engineering team continues to investigate the issue.
We will provide an update by Tuesday, October 20, 2026 at 04:00 PDT with current details.
“We apologize to everyone affected by the interruption.”
Here’s that increase: Bad news for Google Cloud customers, but we hope to get an update soon.
Looking at DownDetector, it appears that some of the early increases in other companies appear to be slowing, with Revolut, Lloyds, Rightmove and DpD recovering.
It’s too early to debate what may have caused the blackout, but the limited extent of the damage (in European regions) could mean many things.
It is unlikely that it was a cyberattack, as user power outage numbers are too low, so it could be an internal software or hardware issue, or even a power surge in the network.
Google Cloud is still set to give us an update soon, so we’ll keep an eye on what they say.
The disruption can have serious consequences for some businesses, demonstrating the need for effective backup systems.
“When a cloud outage leaves people unable to make payments or access everyday services, it exposes how much we rely on infrastructure we never see,” Marijus Briedis, CTO of NordVPN, tells us.
“Given that Google is one of the largest technology companies in the world, the disruption of its cloud services may also affect companies whose customers may have no idea that they depend on Google at all.
“For everyday Google users, this dependency can mean that several services they rely on are suddenly unavailable at the same time. Someone who can’t pay through a banking app may find that their alternative is also affected. Maintaining a second payment option can help, although using a different bank does not guarantee that you will rely on different technology.
“Banks, retailers and delivery companies may seem like separate businesses, but behind the scenes many depend on the same handful of technology vendors. A problem at one vendor can quickly spread beyond its own customers.
“For businesses, the lesson is not that the cloud is unreliable, but that using a major provider does not eliminate the responsibility of preparing for disruption. Critical services need proven agreements to switch to another system when something goes wrong.
“A backup is only useful if it can function regardless of what has failed. Businesses should check whether their primary service and its backup rely on the same underlying systems, and test how quickly they can switch between them. Having copies of your data does not, by itself, mean that customers can continue making payments or accessing their accounts.”
A great update (Google has confirmed the cause of the problem) and it is one of the ideas we anticipated.
“We are experiencing an issue with multiple services in Europe-West2 as of Monday, October 19, 2026 at 23:08 PDT,” the company wrote.
“Due to an electrical event, we experienced an outage in the Europe-West2-b zone. The electrical event is mitigated. Partial mitigation of infrastructure services will be observed in the next 30 minutes and the remaining services will be mitigated thereafter.”
Are you worried about the effect of the blackout? It should be fixed soon, but here are some words of comfort from Dr. Pete Membrey, Director of Research at ExpressVPN.
“Right now, an issue in Google Cloud’s London region is having a ripple effect across banks, government services and retailers, because many of them run on the same underlying infrastructure. When one part of that goes wrong, many familiar apps and websites stop working at once.”
“It’s too early to say what caused it, and people should not assume it’s a cyber attack. Most outages like this turn out to be technical glitches rather than something malicious.”
“The main thing is not to panic. If your banking app is not working, it is most likely an outage, not a problem with your account. There is no need to reset passwords or reinstall anything. Be wary of text messages or emails claiming to be from your bank and asking you to confirm your details due to today’s outage. Services should return once the problem is fixed, so check for official updates and wait for time.”
Google’s latest update also offers some hope for mitigation, noting that while “Google Cloud services are not available in the Europe-West2-b zone, some services in the Europe-West2 region may experience high errors and intermittent network issues.”
“If possible, the affected customer may attempt to migrate their affected workload to another available location (zone or region).”
The good news seems to be that most customers are not suffering any adverse effects, as DownDetector’s charts for other companies appear to be dropping.
Let’s hope this is the beginning of the end now…
The end may very well be in sight: Google Cloud’s latest update notes that things can be completely fixed within an hour.
“Full recovery of existing workloads should tentatively be completed by Tuesday, October 20, 2026 at 06:00,” the update page says.
And that’s it: Google Cloud says the issue has now been fixed and customers should see their services return to normal.
“The issue with affected GCP products has been mitigated for most customers and is currently believed to affect a very small number of customers and is being worked on by our engineering team,” the official update page says.
“If you have questions or are affected, please open a case with the support team and we will work with you until this issue is resolved.”
The company says it will also open a full investigation into the incident and will publish its findings soon.
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