A power-related event at a Google Cloud data center in London caused a significant outage on Tuesday, disrupting services for numerous clients, including major financial institutions and public sector websites. [3, 6, 9]
The disruption began early in the morning and affected the “europe-west2” region. Customers of HSBC, Lloyds and Revolut reported problems with mobile apps, online banking and payments. [4, 5, 6]
The outage also affected services outside banking, including the video system used by courts across England and Wales. [6] Google apologized and said its teams were working throughout the day to restore services. [7]
The incident heightened concerns among UK and EU regulators about the financial sector’s heavy reliance on a small number of large cloud providers for critical operations. [7, 8, 14]