On June 12, 2025, a major disruption hit Google Cloud, affecting platforms like Spotify, Discord, OpenAI, and Snapchat for nearly three hours. Even Google Workspace services — such as Gmail, Meet, Calendar, Chat, Drive — went offline temporarily.
🛑 What Happened?
According to Google’s official Mini Incident Report:
- An invalid automated quota update to the API management system was rolled out globally.
- This caused multiple services to reject API requests with 503 errors.
- Google bypassed the faulty quota check, restoring services in most regions.
- However, us-central1 experienced a delayed recovery due to overload in the quota policy database.
🕒 Timeline (All times in US/Pacific):
- Incident Start: June 12, 10:49 AM
- Most Regions Recovered: 12:48 PM
- Complete Resolution: 1:49 PM
- Total Duration: 3 hours
- Scope: Global
📊 Impact:
- Over 14,700 reports of Google Cloud failure logged in the U.S. (via Downdetector)
- Business platforms experienced latency, backlogs, and temporary service loss.
🔧 What Google Will Do Next:
- Prevent API management from failing due to invalid or corrupt data
- Ensure metadata does not propagate globally without safeguards and testing
- Improve system error handling and test for invalid data conditions
In a public statement, Google said: “We are deeply sorry for the disruption caused to our users and businesses. We are committed to doing better and will share a detailed full incident report soon.”
