Google outage took down Snapchat and YouTube for four hours
Smart home systems' dependence on being connected to Google's servers leaves some users in the lurch during a heatwave.
Monday 3 June 2019 12:47, UK
An outage affecting Google services over the weekend left YouTube and Snapchat users bereft of entertainment for four hours.
Almost every service dependent on Google's cloud platform - from YouTube and Snapchat through to smart home service Nest - went down for around four hours on Sunday.
The issue was reported across the world, with some people complaining on social media about their inability to even turn on the air conditioning because of the outage - although a manual override is available.
A wide range of Google's services were impacted by the outage, leaving not just Google but many of its partners - including Snapchat and Discord - offline.
In its statement to the press the company acknowledged the outage and blamed it on network congestion in California.
The company said: "We are experiencing high levels of network congestion in the eastern USA, affecting multiple service in Google Cloud, GSuite, and YouTube.
"Users may see slow performance or intermittent errors. We believe we have identified the root cause of the congestion and expect to return to a normal service shortly," the company said in a statement.