Google search goes down across the globe and chaos follows. The outage came after an electric incident at a Google data center in Iowa for several hours. The outage lasted for up to an hour. Google however has come out to say that the events are unrelated.
Google Search Goes Down Across the Globe and Chaos Follows
Users and people all over the world were given a snippet of a reminder of just how central their lives are to Google in 2022 when a short period on Monday Google search went down in a couple of cities and countries. Other Google services such as Google maps were also affected.
Reports citing an outage began flowing into DownDetector which is a website and platform that monitors disruptions of services around 6:11 p.m. PT. the outage peaked for 30 minutes before subsiding later. From Portugal to Pakistan, the problem was evident in many countries all across the globe
And instead of links and answers, people who made use of the Google search engine were met with the following error message “The server encountered an error and could not complete your request.”
The Supposed Cause of the Outage
The outage followed immediately after an electrical incident in the early parts of the day at a Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa as per local media and SFGate. The incident injured three technicians at the center critically around midday Iowa time. One of the injured persons was flown to a nearby hospital while the other two persons were moved by ambulance.
The site in Iowa is one of the 14 Google data centers in the US. And based on the type of money that Google has invested there, the Iowa facility seems to be one of the most significant data centers of the company. The tech company spent $5 billion on the Council Bluffs center as per its website while most of the other centers on the other hand cost between $1 billion and $2 billion.
What Google Has To Say about the Outage
A spokesperson from Google however revealed to TechRadar that both incidents were unrelated.
“We’re aware of a software update issue that occurred late this afternoon Pacific Time and briefly affected availability of Google Search and Maps, and we apologize for the inconvenience,” the spokesperson cited. “We worked to quickly address the issue and our services are now back online.”
