Overview

On December 14, 2020, Google services, including Gmail, YouTube, and Google Drive, went offline globally for over an hour. This outage affected billions of users worldwide, disrupting personal, educational, and business activities.

Technical Cause

The outage was traced back to an issue with Google’s Identity Management system. Users were unable to authenticate, resulting in widespread access issues across Google’s services.

Impact

The downtime affected users across multiple platforms, including essential communication tools like Gmail and business applications such as Google Workspace. The outage served as a stark reminder of the risks associated with relying on centralized cloud services.

Lessons Learned

This incident highlighted the need for improved redundancy in cloud infrastructure and a more resilient identity management system to prevent widespread service disruptions in the future.

Source: Wikipedia