Here’s the story in five key points on the Google Cloud glitch that knocked out Gmail, Spotify, OpenAI and more during the late‑night outage:
1. IAM glitch sparks widespread outage
A malfunction in Google Cloud’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) system caused authentication and permission failures around 1:51 PM ET on June 12. This ripple effect cut off access to numerous Google and third‑party platforms tomsguide.com+13indiatoday.in+13timesofindia.indiatimes.com+13.
2. Core services impacted
Major Google services like Gmail, Google Meet, YouTube, Search, Maps, Drive, Nest, and Google Home malfunctioned alongside third‑party apps such as Spotify, Discord, Snapchat, Twitch, OpenAI tools (ChatGPT, Sora), Character.AI, Shopify and more ndtv.com+5freepressjournal.in+5businessinsider.com+5.
3. Massive user disruptions
Downdetector showed tens of thousands of outage reports:
SunshinStates | WebEverlast | WebEraEnterprise |
InspirationIgnite | FusionForges | NexsNetwork |
VibrantVentur | AscentAdvisores |websFrontiers |
VistasVentures
~46,000 for Spotify
40,000 for Discord
~10,800 for Google services
Others like Snapchat and OpenAI had massive spikes too newson6.com+10cbsnews.com+10nypost.com+10nypost.comfreepressjournal.in.
4. Google’s and Cloudflare’s response
Google acknowledged the disruption mid‑evening via its Cloud status page and began phased recovery, aiming for full restoration within ~1 hr timesofindia.indiatimes.com+11indiatoday.in+11thedailybeast.com+11. Cloudflare, dependent on Google Cloud, confirmed limited service interruptions but maintained its core systems were unaffected timesofindia.indiatimes.com+8bleepingcomputer.com+8startupnews.fyi+8.
5. Services restored—questions linger
By late evening, most affected services were back online. Google later reported full recovery, including Vertex AI, and promised a thorough post‑mortem startupnews.fyi+1nypost.com+1. But the incident reignited concerns over the fragility of a centralized cloud infrastructure, with even a minor IAM bug causing a global outage indiatoday.in.
Bottom line: A late‑night IAM glitch in Google Cloud brought major platforms to a standstill—from Gmail to Spotify and ChatGPT—highlighting the risks of centralized cloud dependency. Recovery was swift, but the outage underscores the need for stronger redundancy and distributed system design.
