Millions of users across Europe and Türkiye were left unable to access Google’s core services on Thursday after a sudden outage disrupted platforms including YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome, and Google Translate.

The disruption, which began around 10:00 a.m. local time (07:00 GMT), lasted for roughly an hour and affected dozens of countries. According to monitoring site Outage Report, users in Türkiye, Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, Croatia, Serbia, Armenia, Romania, the Netherlands, Germany, and at least 38 other countries reported difficulties accessing Google services.

Outage-tracking platform DownDetector recorded a sharp rise in reports beginning at 07:10 GMT, with services starting to stabilize around 08:00 GMT.

Türkiye’s Deputy Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Ömer Fatih Sayan, confirmed the widespread disruption, saying: “Google, Android, and related services are experiencing an outage spanning Türkiye and Europe.” He added that Türkiye’s National Cyber Incident Response Center had requested a technical report from Google to clarify the cause of the outage and was closely monitoring developments.

Google initially remained silent on the cause of the problem but later acknowledged the disruption. A spokesperson for the company confirmed that a potential infrastructure issue was being investigated, while stressing that services had been fully restored. “We apologize for the inconvenience caused to our users,” the statement read.

Some users also reported temporary difficulties accessing Spotify during the outage, though it remains unclear whether the issues were connected. Cybersecurity analysts suggested the incident may have been triggered by a configuration error or a network routing issue, though they emphasized that no evidence of a cyberattack had surfaced.

The outage quickly trended across social media platforms, with frustrated users sharing their experiences and memes highlighting the temporary global digital blackout.

The incident highlights the heavy global dependence on Google’s ecosystem for communication, navigation, productivity, and entertainment. Both authorities and Google are expected to release further updates as the investigation continues. (ILKHA)