News
Google Blames API Mishap for Global Cloud Outage That Disrupted Billions of Requests
<p data-start="222" data-end="433">A routine quota update turned into a global meltdown Thursday as Google Cloud&#8217;s API management system buckled, causing a ripple effect that froze core Google apps and third-party services for over three hours.</p>
<p data-start="435" data-end="643">From around 10:49 a.m. ET to 3:49 p.m. ET, the outage disrupted millions of users and impacted services used by everyone from remote workers and tech startups to social media addicts and enterprise engineers.</p>
<h2 data-start="645" data-end="705">What Went Wrong? Google&#8217;s API Platform Choked on Bad Data</h2>
<p data-start="707" data-end="928">Google says the culprit was “invalid automated quota data” that slipped through internal checks and reached global systems. That’s a fancy way of saying their API gatekeeper had a data hiccup—and no one caught it in time.</p>
<p data-start="930" data-end="1258">Only after Google’s engineering team bypassed the faulty quota validation logic did things start returning to normal. That workaround got most regions back online within two hours. But the us-central1 region (which covers major data centers in Iowa) took much longer, with some services stuck in cleanup mode even after the fix.</p>
<p data-start="1260" data-end="1316">Here&#8217;s what Google shared in their preliminary analysis:</p>
<ul data-start="1318" data-end="1512">
<li data-start="1318" data-end="1367">
<p data-start="1320" data-end="1367">The root cause: a flawed automated quota update</p>
</li>
<li data-start="1368" data-end="1436">
<p data-start="1370" data-end="1436">The symptom: 503 errors when external apps tried using Google APIs</p>
</li>
<li data-start="1437" data-end="1512">
<p data-start="1439" data-end="1512">The domino effect: widespread failure across Google services and partners</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p data-start="1514" data-end="1691">For such a tech giant, that kind of single point of failure seems&#8230; avoidable. But then again, this isn’t the first time an API change has thrown a wrench into a global system.</p>
<p data-start="1514" data-end="1691"><a href="https://www.theibulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/google-cloud-data-center-outage-incident.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57674" src="https://www.theibulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/google-cloud-data-center-outage-incident.jpg" alt="google-cloud-data-center-outage-incident" width="1046" height="816" /></a></p>
<h2 data-start="1693" data-end="1747">Who Got Hit the Hardest? It Wasn&#8217;t Just Gmail Users</h2>
<p data-start="1749" data-end="1917">The list of affected services reads like a who&#8217;s who of Google apps. Think Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Meet, Docs—basically, most tools the average office leans on daily.</p>
<p data-start="1919" data-end="2139">But the real damage was seen in third-party platforms that sit on top of Google Cloud infrastructure. Apps like Discord, Spotify, and Snapchat all reported issues ranging from slow performance to complete unavailability.</p>
<p data-start="2141" data-end="2207">For developers and backend engineers, the headache was even worse:</p>
<ul data-start="2209" data-end="2447">
<li data-start="2209" data-end="2285">
<p data-start="2211" data-end="2285">NPM, a popular JavaScript package manager, struggled to serve code modules</p>
</li>
<li data-start="2286" data-end="2369">
<p data-start="2288" data-end="2369">Firebase Studio, critical for app development and deployment, became inaccessible</p>
</li>
<li data-start="2370" data-end="2447">
<p data-start="2372" data-end="2447">Some Cloudflare services relying on Workers KV sputtered or failed outright</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p data-start="2449" data-end="2544">You could almost hear the collective groan of developers from different time zones all at once.</p>
<h2 data-start="2546" data-end="2595">The Chain Reaction: Cloudflare Takes a Hit Too</h2>
<p data-start="2597" data-end="2795">Cloudflare, a key backbone provider for countless websites and apps, also got caught in the blast radius. It wasn’t their infrastructure that failed directly—it was their dependency on Google Cloud.</p>
<p data-start="2797" data-end="3019">The failure hit Workers KV, Cloudflare&#8217;s key-value store used for everything from authentication tokens to CDN asset configuration. The result? Spikes in error rates, configuration failures, and disrupted service delivery.</p>
<p data-start="3021" data-end="3151">In a candid post-mortem, Cloudflare clarified the failure wasn&#8217;t security-related and no data was lost. But they did confirm that:</p>
<p data-start="3155" data-end="3289">“The underlying storage infrastructure used by our Workers KV service, backed by a third-party cloud provider, experienced an outage.”</p>
<p data-start="3291" data-end="3330">Translation? It was Google Cloud again.</p>
<h2 data-start="3332" data-end="3388">Google Admits Testing and Error Handling Were Lacking</h2>
<p data-start="3390" data-end="3600">In an unusual show of transparency, Google admitted that the system didn&#8217;t have sufficient safeguards in place to catch the problem early. The flawed data update should’ve been flagged in testing—but it wasn’t.</p>
<p data-start="3602" data-end="3758">That kind of lapse is raising eyebrows across the industry, particularly because of Google Cloud&#8217;s positioning as a platform for mission-critical workloads.</p>
<p data-start="3811" data-end="3868">“We lacked effective testing and error-handling systems.”</p>
<p data-start="3870" data-end="4018">For a company pushing AI, quantum computing, and enterprise-scale infrastructure, that’s a bit like a pilot admitting they forgot to check the fuel.</p>
<h2 data-start="4020" data-end="4075">By the Numbers: How Long Did It Last and What Broke?</h2>
<p data-start="4077" data-end="4185">Below is a rough breakdown of service impact and duration based on publicly available data and user reports:</p>
<div class="_tableContainer_16hzy_1">
<div class="_tableWrapper_16hzy_14 group flex w-fit flex-col-reverse" tabindex="-1">
<table class="w-fit min-w-(--thread-content-width)" data-start="4187" data-end="4865">
<thead data-start="4187" data-end="4283">
<tr data-start="4187" data-end="4283">
<th data-start="4187" data-end="4213" data-col-size="sm">Service Affected</th>
<th data-start="4213" data-end="4232" data-col-size="sm">Issue Start (ET)</th>
<th data-start="4232" data-end="4251" data-col-size="sm">Partial Recovery</th>
<th data-start="4251" data-end="4267" data-col-size="sm">Full Recovery</th>
<th data-start="4267" data-end="4283" data-col-size="sm">Duration</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody data-start="4381" data-end="4865">
<tr data-start="4381" data-end="4477">
<td data-start="4381" data-end="4407" data-col-size="sm">Gmail</td>
<td data-start="4407" data-end="4426" data-col-size="sm">10:49 AM</td>
<td data-start="4426" data-end="4445" data-col-size="sm">~12:30 PM</td>
<td data-start="4445" data-end="4461" data-col-size="sm">3:49 PM</td>
<td data-start="4461" data-end="4477" data-col-size="sm">~5 hours</td>
</tr>
<tr data-start="4478" data-end="4574">
<td data-start="4478" data-end="4504" data-col-size="sm">Google Drive</td>
<td data-start="4504" data-end="4523" data-col-size="sm">11:00 AM</td>
<td data-start="4523" data-end="4542" data-col-size="sm">~12:45 PM</td>
<td data-start="4542" data-end="4558" data-col-size="sm">3:49 PM</td>
<td data-start="4558" data-end="4574" data-col-size="sm">~4.5 hours</td>
</tr>
<tr data-start="4575" data-end="4671">
<td data-start="4575" data-end="4601" data-col-size="sm">Firebase</td>
<td data-start="4601" data-end="4620" data-col-size="sm">10:55 AM</td>
<td data-start="4620" data-end="4639" data-col-size="sm">~12:40 PM</td>
<td data-start="4639" data-end="4655" data-col-size="sm">3:30 PM</td>
<td data-start="4655" data-end="4671" data-col-size="sm">~4.5 hours</td>
</tr>
<tr data-start="4672" data-end="4768">
<td data-start="4672" data-end="4698" data-col-size="sm">Cloudflare Workers KV</td>
<td data-start="4698" data-end="4717" data-col-size="sm">11:15 AM</td>
<td data-start="4717" data-end="4736" data-col-size="sm">~1:15 PM</td>
<td data-start="4736" data-end="4752" data-col-size="sm">4:00 PM</td>
<td data-start="4752" data-end="4768" data-col-size="sm">~5 hours</td>
</tr>
<tr data-start="4769" data-end="4865">
<td data-start="4769" data-end="4795" data-col-size="sm">Spotify / Snapchat</td>
<td data-start="4795" data-end="4814" data-col-size="sm">11:30 AM</td>
<td data-start="4814" data-end="4833" data-col-size="sm">~2:00 PM</td>
<td data-start="4833" data-end="4849" data-col-size="sm">4:00 PM</td>
<td data-start="4849" data-end="4865" data-col-size="sm">~4.5 hours</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<div class="sticky end-(--thread-content-margin) h-0 self-end select-none">
<div class="absolute end-0 flex items-end"></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p data-start="4867" data-end="4977">It’s worth noting that not all users were hit equally. Some services were spotty; others were totally offline.</p>
<h2 data-start="4979" data-end="5024">Fallout and Fixes: Will This Happen Again?</h2>
<p data-start="5026" data-end="5240">Google is still preparing a full incident report. But they’ve already pledged changes. That includes more robust data validation, better internal testing, and presumably more human oversight on system-wide updates.</p>
<p data-start="5242" data-end="5463">Cloudflare, for its part, has already taken action. They&#8217;re moving the core of their KV store to their own R2 object storage solution. It’s a long-term play to reduce dependency on third-party providers like Google Cloud.</p>
<p data-start="5465" data-end="5611">As one engineer half-jokingly put it on X (formerly Twitter), “If one quota update can break the internet, maybe we’ve over-optimized just a bit.”</p>

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