Google Cloud Outage in London Disrupts Banks and Major Firms Across Europe

UPDATE - follow-up to Google Cloud outage: Revolut suffers service disruption as bank customers report problems – business live: A major cloud computing outage from Google has hit the London region, causing widespread technical problems for banks, financial institutions, and online services.

The Outage Details

Google reports that multiple services in its europe-west2 region, which is London, are suffering from elevated errors and intermittent network failures. Affected systems include BigQuery, Cloud Run, App Engine, Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine, and Cloud Storage, while Looker Studio remains unaffected. Google engineers are investigating the issue and testing fixes, though no immediate workaround is available yet.

Impact on Companies

The disruption has hurt several banks and fintech firms. A spokesperson for Lloyds confirmed that the bank and its Halifax brand experienced problems today, with some customers unable to log into their banking app. According to tech news site The Register, other companies affected include Royal Mail, DPD, BT, Cloudflare, and Screwfix.

Expert Reactions

Dr Amro Al-Said Ahmad, a computer science lecturer at Keele University, states that the incident impacts more than 38 cloud-native services and highlights the fragility of modern cloud infrastructure. Jake Moore, global cybersecurity adviser at ESET, adds that the outage shows how much dependence society places on a handful of tech giants, warning that such services represent a huge point of failure.

Context

This outage comes exactly 12 months after a serious disruption at rival Amazon's cloud computing division. Such incidents demonstrate how a single regional failure in modern digital infrastructure can ripple through entire supply chains and affect millions of everyday users.