A lot of the internet is down right now

On Thursday, significant portions of the internet experienced disruptions, impacting various digital services including the global cloud platform Cloudflare and popular applications like Spotify. The cause of these widespread issues has been traced back to a Google Cloud outage, which the company began to investigate at 11:46 a.m. PT. In a statement to TechCrunch, Google Cloud spokesperson Devon Smiley confirmed the investigation into service disruptions affecting customers, though an estimated time for resolution has not yet been provided. Cloudflare also acknowledged the disruptions around 11:19 a.m. PT, indicating that their services were impacted as well. By 12:12 p.m. PT, Cloudflare reported signs of recovery, noting, "This is a Google Cloud outage. A limited number of services at Cloudflare use Google Cloud and were impacted. We expect them to come back shortly. The core Cloudflare services were not impacted." Reports from users on the crowdsourced platform DownDetector highlighted that several widely-used apps, including Discord, Snapchat, and Character.AI, faced outages during the afternoon. Additionally, AI coding platforms like Cursor and Replit also appeared to be affected. A Spotify representative, Shira Rimini, mentioned that they were monitoring Google Cloud’s status for further updates. In contrast, an AWS spokesperson confirmed there were no service disruptions on their end, while Microsoft Azure reported no outages either. TechCrunch has reached out to other cloud service providers for comments, but responses were pending at the time of publication. Historically, service disruptions of this scale tend to resolve within hours, and it appears that the issues began around 11 a.m. PT on Thursday, significantly interrupting the workday for countless individuals across the United States. It is anticipated that services will gradually come back online soon.