In the early hours of Thursday, a sudden and widespread disruption stemming from Google Cloud sent shockwaves across the internet. Popular platforms including Gmail, Spotify, OpenAI tools like ChatGPT, and smart home devices powered by Google Home and Nest experienced unexpected outages, leaving millions of users unable to access essential digital services.

The root cause of the incident was traced to a severe malfunction in Google Cloud’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) system—a backbone service that governs authentication and user access permissions across apps relying on Google Cloud. When IAM faltered, services that depended on it for user verification and login functionality began to fail in rapid succession.

Reports of service disruptions started emerging around 1:51 PM ET, as users around the world noticed erratic behaviours across multiple platforms. Some encountered strange error messages, while others faced complete lockouts from their accounts or saw smart home devices become unresponsive.

High-profile services like Gmail, Spotify, ChatGPT, and various smart home ecosystems were among the most visible victims of the outage. For many, the blackout highlighted just how deeply embedded cloud platforms are in daily life—from email and music to AI tools and home automation.

While users and tech leaders began flagging the problem across social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) early on, an official confirmation from Google was slower to arrive. It wasn’t until 6:16 PM ET that Google posted an update on its Cloud status page, acknowledging the issue as a service-impacting event caused by IAM-related failures. Shortly after the update, recovery efforts began in earnest, and most services were back online by late evening.

The ripple effect of the glitch also touched other infrastructure players. Cloudflare, which handles content delivery and internet security for numerous websites, confirmed disruptions as well—though it noted that only those parts of its services relying on Google Cloud were affected.

Replit CEO Amjad Masad was among the first to publicly identify Google Cloud as the root of the issue. Following this early warning, Google confirmed that "multiple GCP products are experiencing impact due to Identity and Access Management Service Issue."

The incident has reignited debate over the increasing centralization of the internet’s architecture. With so many critical services concentrated on a few massive cloud platforms, even a small glitch can cause massive, cascading failures across the globe. While Thursday’s outage was resolved in a matter of hours, it has sparked renewed calls for decentralized and more resilient internet infrastructure, capable of weathering future system-level failures more gracefully.

As cloud services continue to grow in complexity and dominance, the need for diversified, fail-safe systems is becoming more urgent—a sentiment echoed by experts and users alike following this latest digital disruption.