Google Cloud Outage on June 12, 2025: Global Disruption Hits Major Platforms
On June 12, 2025, Google Cloud experienced a widespread global outage, affecting businesses and users across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The incident began at approximately 10:51 a.m. PDT, disrupting key services and triggering a cascade of technical issues across the web.
What Happened?
The outage primarily impacted 13 Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services, including:
- Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- Cloud Storage
- Cloud SQL
- Vertex AI
- BigQuery and Cloud Run
These disruptions severely affected platforms such as Spotify, Discord, Etsy, Snapchat, and Cloudflare, all of which rely heavily on Google Cloud infrastructure.
Cause and Response
Soon after the outage began, Google engineers identified the root cause: a critical failure in the Identity and Access Management (IAM) system. This failure prevented proper authentication and authorization, paralyzing operations across multiple services.
Google responded quickly by deploying mitigation measures, starting recovery efforts region by region. While most areas saw improvement by mid-afternoon, us-central1 (Iowa) remained affected until early evening.
Ripple Effects
The outage had far-reaching effects. Although Cloudflare’s core infrastructure remained stable, several of its clients reported delays and interruptions due to their reliance on GCP. This incident highlights the interconnected nature of today’s internet infrastructure—when a major provider like Google Cloud falters, others feel the impact.
On platforms like Downdetector, thousands of users reported issues. Meanwhile, social media channels lit up with frustration, memes, and real-time updates from affected users.
Resolution and Recovery
By 6:18 p.m. PDT, Google confirmed that all affected services had been fully restored. A final update on the Google Cloud Status Dashboard stated that normal operations had resumed globally. Google also committed to publishing a detailed post-incident analysis (PIA) to explain the outage’s root cause and steps to prevent recurrence.
Summary
The Google Cloud outage on June 12 disrupted critical digital services globally, underlining the risks of centralized cloud infrastructure. Triggered by a malfunction in IAM services, the incident took several hours to resolve. Despite initial disruptions, recovery was swift, and no data loss was reported.
