Google has apologised after an outage in its cloud network disrupted a host of online services, including banks and the courts.
Revolut, which has millions of UK customers, was among the firms reporting problems caused by the incident, while the cloud video platform used in trials by courts across the country also went down.
Google said a “power event” caused the outage in the “Europe-west2” region, believed to be London, since late evening on Monday.
It said this was causing multiple cloud services to experience errors and intermittent network failures.
By early afternoon on Tuesday, Google said its services were starting to recover – and it “tentatively” expected full recovery by 2pm.
“A power event caused an outage within europe-west2-b zone. The power event is mitigated,” Google said on its service health page.
“We are seeing the recovery of services and are prioritising the recovery of existing workloads. Customers may not be able to yet create new workloads.
“We apologise to all who are affected by the disruption.”
It said a possible workaround for affected customers is to “try to migrate their workload impacted to another available location (zone or region)”.
The tech giant is expected to provide another update on the situation on Tuesday afternoon.
Revolut said multiple systems were down or partially unavailable including card payments, transfers, cash withdrawals and signing into accounts.
More than 1,500 people reported problems with Revolut earlier on Tuesday, according to to the Downdetector platform.
A spokesperson said: “We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services.
“We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe.
“We’ve been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologise to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused.”
HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) was experiencing issues with its cloud video platform which it uses for secure video-links to court hearings in England and Wales.
Mr Justice Bennathan, the judge for the rape and sexual assault trial of Russell Brand at Southwark Crown Court in London, said there had been “problems with Google” but that it was back up and running.
Journalists using the platform to observe cases reported it had begun working shortly after Google’s noon update.
Hundreds of Lloyds Bank and HSBC users were also reporting issues to Downdetector, as well as platforms like Royal Mail, DPD and Rightmove.
Budgeting app Emma told customers it was down because of the Google Cloud outage.
The company posted on X: “Emma is currently down due to a Google Cloud outage affecting services in London since 7am.
“This is a technical outage, not a security issue.
“We’re monitoring closely and will update here as soon as the app is back. Sorry for the disruption.”
Halifax, which is owned by Lloyds Banking Group, responded to a user on X to say it was “aware some customers are having issues with our app and online”, adding: “We’re sorry about this and are working hard to fix it.”
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