Google Experiences Rare, Widespread Outage

Reports flooded in from Twitter on Monday evening as Google experienced a rare, widespread outage.

Searchers around the world were met with this error message for a brief period when using Google:

According to Down Detector, the outage occurred around 9:39 p.m Eastern and lasted for a little over ten minutes.

Image Credit: Screenshot from downdetector.com/status/google/, August 2022.

Image Credit: Screenshot from downdetector.com/status/google/, August 2022.

By all accounts the outage is resolved at the time of writing, though the event itself is worth documenting. It certainly didn’t go unnoticed as thousands of users took to Twitter to ask if Google is down.

Here’s a sample of some of the tweets:

Had a Google search engine error for the first time ever. The engine was totally down. It’s so rare the first thing I did was come to Twitter to see if anything major is going on with the web. Conspiracy theories here we come! #google #error

— Ryan Baker (@RyanBakerSLO) August 9, 2022

me using twitter as a search engine to check if google is down pic.twitter.com/GjNRoA3WzW

— val♥ (@omlitsari) August 9, 2022

JUST IN: Google Search is currently facing major network outages for millions of people across 40+ countries. pic.twitter.com/B5GxUIVTHw

— CryptoWhale (@CryptoWhale) August 9, 2022

What Caused The August 9 Google Outage?

The cause of the outage is not known at this time. Google has yet to officially acknowledge a problem occurred.

Major news organizations who were quick to jump on the story, including Reuters and CNBC, say Google hasn’t responded to requests for comment.

Earlier in the day there was reportedly an explosion at a Google data center in Iowa that injured three technicians.

Some news outlets are running with the story that the two events are connected, though that has yet to be confirmed.

Electrical explosion reported at Google’s data center in Iowa, 3 electricians critically injured – KETV

— BNO News (@BNONews) August 9, 2022

🚨#BREAKING: Reports of explosion at Google data center in Iowa

📌#Iowa | #USA

Right now Thousands to million of users where having major issues with the web search service google as it was currently down as reports say an explosion has occurred at Google data center pic.twitter.com/fh9TFGRE9Q

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) August 9, 2022

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The reported explosion at a Google data center in Iowa happened around noon, according to this reporthttps://t.co/tmf8ezm0MD

— Steve Lookner (@lookner) August 9, 2022

This story will be updated if and when there are more details to report.

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