UK — The Register
Google Cloud's London zones takes a nap, multiple services disrupted
Software1 min read
Google Cloud had a large outage in one of its London data zones on 20 October 2026. Many well-known services in the UK and Europe were hit, and Google had no estimate for when they would work again.
What happened
Starting at 06:08 UTC, Google Cloud customers in Western Europe had serious problems with many services. The problem is in europe-west2-b, one of three local availability zones (separate data centers) in the London region. Google said several services had errors and network failures. It did not give a recovery time.
Key facts
- Outage started at 06:08 UTC on 20 October 2026.
- europe-west2-b is one of three availability zones in the London region.
- Affected Google services include BigQuery Data Transfer Service, Cloud Filestore, Cloud Run, Google App Engine, Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, Google Kubernetes Engine, and Managed Service for Apache Kafka.
- Google said it would give customers an update at about 09:30 UTC.
- Users on Down Detector reported problems at Lloyds Bank, HSBC, Royal Mail, Rightmove, DPD, BT, Cloudflare, Screwfix and Revolut.
Why one zone can cause so much trouble
Cloud providers split their data centers into zones. The idea is that if one zone fails, others keep working. Still, many companies depend on a single zone for some services, so a problem there can spread to them. One Reddit user noted that a non-HA service (one without high availability, meaning no backup setup) was inside the failed zone.
Why it matters
Banks, delivery firms and other businesses rely on cloud services to run their apps. When a cloud zone goes down, customers can lose access to money, parcels and websites. Revolut said that customers' money and data were safe, but the disruption still affected people. The story shows how much daily life depends on a few big cloud providers.
What to watch
- Whether Google gives a recovery time at its 09:30 UTC update.
- Whether the affected services return to normal and when.
- Whether Google explains the cause of the failure afterward.
- Whether affected companies such as Lloyds, HSBC and Revolut report further problems.
Glossary
- Google Cloud
- Google's service that rents computing power, storage and software to businesses over the internet.
- europe-west2-b
- The name of one availability zone in Google's London region.
- Google Kubernetes Engine
- A Google Cloud service that runs and manages groups of containers, which are packaged app parts.
- Down Detector
- A website where users report when online services stop working.