Extensive Update on the Recent June 12 Internet Disruption: Essential Information Revealed (Revised)

Thursday's Web-Wide Meltdown: Unraveling the Mystery

🚨 UPDATE: June 13, 2025, 10:45 a.m ET 🚨 - The Internet catastrophe that rocked the globe on Thursday afternoon seems to have drawn to a close. Dig deeper into the potential root causes.

Google Cloud has confirmed that its services have "fully bounced back" as they've stated in their latest report. Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian, expressed his apologies for the chaos experienced by Google Cloud's customers.

Meanwhile, Cloudflare, a popular IT service provider, has declared that they are back in business following an outage that lasted approximately 2.5 hours.

💬 "We're truly sorry for this calamity. This fiasco was our fault, and though the immediate culprit (or trigger) was a third-party vendor screw-up, we accept accountability for our dependency on them and the way we structure our systems," they elaborated in a blog post.

Thursday afternoon witnessed a cascading chain reaction of popular internet services faltering at the same time.

Dumbfounded netizens flooded Google and social media with confusion, querying why their favorite sites and apps were inaccessible. Down Detector, exhibiting a scene reminiscent of a zoo, was strewn with rising orange line graphs, signaling trouble around 2 p.m. ET on June 12, 2025 (Disclaimer: our parent company, Ziff Davis, owns both this website and Down Detector).

But what set the dominoes tumbling?

Let's break it down.

What knocked the world wide web out of whack?

In a statement to us, a Cloudflare representative steered the finger at Google Cloud. Additionally, Cloudflare's status page attributed their service interruptions to "a 3rd party service failure that is a critical dependency for their services."

Initially, speculation revolved around web hosting giants like Cloudflare and Google Cloud, given that both companies came forward with problems on Thursday. A preliminary update on the Cloudflare status page read, "We're encountering a plethora of services susceptible to intermittent failures. We're in the process of investigating this, and we'll update our findings service by service." While Google Cloud's status page reported, "Numerous GCP products are experiencing technical difficulties."

What's the latest from the Google Cloud scene?

By 5:15 p.m. ET on Thursday, Google Cloud's status page declared, "Over 90% of the Google Cloud products are operating smoothly again," with some issues persisting. As of Thursday evening, service had fully been restored, ending the Google Cloud saga.

A previous update on the page revealed, "We've identified the main issue and implemented suitable countermeasures. Our infrastructure is recovering across all regions, except us-central1. Google Cloud products that rely on the affected infrastructure are witnessing recovery in numerous locations. Our engineers are active on sites experiencing issues in us-central1 and multi-region/us, working tirelessly to restore full service. We are unable to provide a reliable ETA for complete recovery."

What does Down Detector have to say?

Beginning around 2 p.m. ET on Thursday, June 12, Down Detector, a platform where users can report glitches with popular websites and applications, was bombarded with an avalanche of user complaints, with Google Services, artificial intelligence platforms, and e-commerce sites all reeling from the blow. Streaming and social apps such as Twitch, Nintendo Switch Online, and Discord also experienced a surge in error reports.

The wave of outage reports began to decrease by 3:30 p.m., and after a few hours, most platforms appeared to be functioning as expected.

Was Google the victim or the culprit?

During the initial downtime, users reported a myriad of issues with various Google services, although Google Search and Gmail seemed to be operational for most users. Multiple reporters from our team also encountered problems accessing services such as Google Meet. Google Cloud bore the brunt of the issues, which may have accounted for the difficulties experienced by many services.**

Which sites, apps, and platforms suffered?

As of 3:20 p.m. ET on Thursday, numerous popular platforms were on the ropes or grappling with disruptions. According to Down Detector, the following sites reported an increase in error messages:

Discord
Google and associated offerings (e.g., YouTube, Google Meet)
Spotify
Twitch
Character.ai
Rocket League
Cloudflare
Etsy
Pokémon Trading Card Game
Snapchat
fuboTV
Anthropic
Shopify
Gemini
MLB.tv
Doordash
Ikea
Equifax
Marvel
Vimeo
Nintendo Switch Online
Gitlab
Calendly
Bluesky
Grok
Fortnite
Apple Music
Netflix
Disney Plus
Prime Video

This story is still unfolding...

UPDATE: Jun. 12, 2025, 6:30 p.m. EDT This story has been updated with additional details about the widespread internet service disruption. An earlier version of this story claimed that Amazon Web Services (AWS) was affected by the outages; however, an Amazon representative told us this is not the case. An AWS spokesperson said, "At present, no AWS services are experiencing major issues."

Topics Internet Outages, Google Cloud, Cloudflare, Web Hosting

The Internet outage that occurred on Thursday was linked to issues with popular tech companies such as Google Cloud and Cloudflare, with Cloudflare's outage being attributed to a "third-party service failure that is a critical dependency for their services."
Down Detector, a platform for reporting glitches with popular websites and apps, was flooded with complaints on Thursday afternoon, indicating issues with Google Services, artificial intelligence platforms, e-commerce sites, and several other apps like Twitch, Nintendo Switch Online, Discord, Spotify, and Snapchat.
Social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, were abuzz with confusion and queries from users who were unable to access their favorite sites and apps during the outage.
Among the apps and platforms affected by the outage were streaming services like Netflix, Disney Plus, and Prime Video, e-commerce sites like Etsy and Shopify, and tech companies like Apple Music and Anthropic.
Amidst the chaos, tech giants like Amazon were not directly impacted by the outage, as an Amazon representative clarified that there were no major issues with Amazon Web Services (AWS) at the time.
The cascading chain reaction of popular internet services faltering simultaneously on Thursday led many to question the interconnected nature of our modern digital infrastructure and the potential risks associated with its reliance on third-party vendors and centralized systems.