Google Cloud crash disrupts websites‚ Spotify‚ Snapchat

18 July 2018 - 07:45 By timeslive

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File photo.
Image: Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP

Google’s cloud-computing service went down briefly on Tuesday evening‚ disrupting websites and apps hosted on the platform such as Snapchat‚ Discord and Spotify.

TimesLIVE was also affected‚ along with partner news websites‚ including BusinessLIVE‚ SowetanLIVE‚ HeraldLIVE and DispatchLIVE.

Snapchatters were advised to stay logged in while the problem was being attended to.

Many Snapchatters are having trouble using the app as well as our support site 😔 We're working with a partner on the fix! In the meantime, we recommend staying logged in 🔒
— Snapchat Support (@snapchatsupport) July 17, 2018

Pokémon GO and Discord were also affected.

Trainers, we're aware of a technical issue causing an outage. Stay tuned for more information, and thanks for your patience as we investigate.
— Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) July 17, 2018

Users trying to access major websites were greeted with “502 errors”. Many people were confused by the outage and took to social media to vent their frustration.

Responding to the alert by Pokémon GO‚ one user tweeted: “Someone at 'The Internet' tripped over a cable. Lots of things went down.”

Someone at 'The Internet' tripped over a cable. Lots of things went down.
— Kojin Dan (@Kojindan) July 17, 2018

For the tech savvy‚ Google explained the nature of the problem. “We are investigating a problem with Google Cloud Global Loadbalancers returning 502s‚” Google said.

Once the problem was resolved‚ Google said: “We will conduct an internal investigation of this issue and make appropriate improvements to our systems to help prevent or minimize future recurrence. We will provide a more detailed analysis of this incident once we have completed our internal investigation.”