Google Cloud Resolves Service Disruption in Europe-West2 Region Causing UK Outages

According to a report from BBC UK, Google Cloud stated it had resolved a disruption at its UK cloud site, which resulted in an outage affecting UK banks, businesses, and the courts. The tech giant, which is one of a limited number of large cloud computing firms underpinning many online platforms, reported an "issue with multiple services" at its London data centre complex, designated "europe-west2," early on Tuesday.

Google Cloud issued a statement on Tuesday evening, noting that it had resolved a disruption to its services at a third-party facility within its europe-west2 cloud region due to a power event, and confirmed that services had been restored. The company also mentioned it would publish an analysis of the incident on its external service health dashboard.

Updates to Google Cloud's service dashboard on Tuesday morning had indicated that several of its cloud services were "experiencing elevated errors and intermittent network failures in europe-west2 region," which is its UK cloud facility in London. It was later specified that the problems originated from a "power event" within one of its smaller data centre zones, europe-west2-b.

This incident affected a variety of popular UK platforms and services, with customers reporting issues with sites such as Royal Mail, DPD, and the e-bike service Forest. Furthermore, the HM Courts and Tribunals Service acknowledged an issue impacting the video platform utilized for remote hearings.

Banking services were among the most significantly affected, with customers reporting difficulties ranging from being unable to access funds internationally to problems completing a property purchase. Rachael Ellen, a 25-year-old Revolut user from Glasgow, informed BBC News that she could not access her money on the day, stating that her Revolut account was not functioning correctly, which prevented her from paying for parking at a shopping centre and left her in a difficult situation regarding accessing needed funds. She also mentioned being unable to view a transaction from a relative and receiving a response from the app's help bot indicating no pending incoming transactions. More than 1,500 reports concerning issues with Revolut services were flagged to a platform outage monitor shortly after 08:00 BST on Tuesday. A spokesperson for Revolut confirmed that some of its services were disrupted earlier as a result of the Google Cloud outage, but later stated that services were now fully restored and that customers' money and data remained safe throughout the incident.

Customers of Lloyds Bank, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland, all owned by the Lloyds Banking Group, also reported problems affecting some of their online banking services. A spokesperson for Lloyds did not confirm the cause of the issues affecting some of its services but stated to the BBC later on Tuesday that they understood the root issues had been resolved and expected all services to return to normal soon.

Guy Baybutt, who works for the family-run business The Veg Box Company in Preston, reported being "severely affected" by Tuesday's outage. Baybutt told the BBC that his firm, which supplies fresh produce across the UK, could not access its website to download and process customer orders due to the technical problems. He also noted that the company was unable to book parcels onto DPD's system for collection, putting orders scheduled for dispatch that day at risk of delay. Additionally, Baybutt mentioned that customers could not access the company's website to place new orders, leading to lost sales during the outage. He added that such disruptions could have "serious financial consequences" for small businesses like his, as they lack the resources of larger companies to absorb lost revenue, especially when dealing with perishable produce requiring prompt delivery.

This incident occurred exactly one year after an outage at AWS' largest cloud site knocked over more than 1,000 sites, including UK banks, for several hours. Experts suggest this latest event demonstrates the extent to which many businesses depend on core services provided by a small number of major cloud operators. Prof Feng Li, associate dean for research & innovation at Bayes Business School, commented that Google Cloud's outage serves as a reminder of how deeply economies depend on just a few cloud providers. He added that the cause of the power problem identified by Google Cloud was not yet clear, noting that large cloud systems are complex and failures will occur, but emphasized that what is important is the extent of the spread, the speed of service recovery, and whether customers have viable alternatives.