“Something went wrong” – This message frightened all as Google went offline for 45 minutes or Google outage

Across the world, many had passed a trying time of about 45 minutes on December 14th after Google went offline. Monday’s Google outage had proved the role played by Google for the modern existence as it is the centralized search engine. Online services powered by Google had suffered the disruption which even includes Google’s enterprise tool workplaces as well. Some of the popular apps that were majorly affected are Google Maps, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Gmail, and YouTube. However, the good thing was that the outage lasted only for 45 minutes which was a sigh of relief for all.

According to Google, the outage that lasted for 45 minutes was related to the authentication system outage which happened due to an internal storage quota issue. High errors were experienced by the services that required users to log in on the platforms. However, the best thing about the outage was that it didn’t take long enough time to resolve and all the services were resolved as well. Online work was temporarily halted for many including the publishing companies.

Why was Google exactly down and out?

As per the sources of Google, there was an authentication system outage that hampered the server and rendered it useless for 45 minutes. The actual reason behind this outage was due to the fact that Google’s authentication system was unable to confirm the user’s identities and who they said and they were. This blackout has proved itself and showed how far-reaching the effect could pose with a single point of failure in the centralized system from Google.

Europe was largely affected by the outage and people were not able to access their mail ids and Google docs. Some of the native apps from Google that are popularly used in the Smartphone, like the Google Map, Google Calendar, etc. ceased to work. The internet-connected devices working through the Google Home even went down for that time span.

Some important points to be noted that relates to Google’s outage –

•    Google went offline shortly before noon UK time and had lasted for over an hour before the services were restored as usual.

•    User’s experienced problems using Gmail, Google Drive, Android Play Store, Google Maps, and several others.

•    The search engine remained unaffected, however, which has barred it from affecting its other services.

•    Google’s authentication system was hit which is used for logging in and other similar functions.

•    Users across the world, however, were able to access the website’s landing pages in “incognito mode” where there is no requirement of storing the user’s log activities.

•    The outage affected all the Google-connected smart devices like the home speakers, lights, etc., and users were not able to operate those devices the way it should be.

Tough the outage may have been for a short while but had significantly influenced the day-to-day activities especially in the trying times of the COVID – 19 pandemics. It had affected many workplaces as most of the people were working from their home and managing all their work using the services offered by Google like Google docs, Gmail, etc.

The YouTube users were quite annoyed when they were greeted by the error message “something went wrong”. According to a popular online traffic managing company, the traffic volume of YouTube’s customers had plummeted by up to 56 percent. The outage also had a knock-on effect on other apps such as PubG and Pokemon Go. The outage had knock life off the track due to the fact that Google offers a multitude of services that range from messaging to video sharing, maps, photos, storing documents, and playing games.