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First a general collapse of the Google suite, then continuous micro downs in the following days, mainly related to the Gmail email service.

What happened?

On Monday, December 14 at 3:35 a.m. (American time) Google Suite stopped “working” and then returned to activity after about 50 minutes.

This is what Google declares in an official statement on the Workspace dashboard, which reads “
Google experienced an interruption of the authentication system for about 45 minutes due to an internal storage quota issue”
and continues by reassuring its users that all services have been restored.

50 minutes that kept the world of the Internet suspended and that continue to keep it, also seen, in the following days other downs were recorded that mainly affected the Gmail platform.

After half an hour of blackout, the first services to return to operation were Youtube, Drive and Google Maps, although with some small problems (inability to access the contacts saved in the address book of the mailbox) the services started working again.

Which apps affected the collapse?

We are all now addicted to Google, in one way or another Google has become our faithful friend, always ready to answer any doubt or uncertainty, but also ready to store our data thanks to Drive that allows us to have everything at our fingertips, or to remind us of our business appointments thanks to Google Calendar, or to give us the right directions with the Google Maps satellite navigator.

Can we think about what happened when all of this came to a standstill? What could have happened if the world’s most important search engine had also stopped being active?

Let’s start with what really got stuck, the consequences of the STOP of some applications.

Many reports of inefficiencies have arrived due to the malfunction of Drive, Youtube, Gmail, Meet or Classroom used in this period by students currently in DaD (distance learning).

There was no shortage of tongue-in-cheek messages that immediately suggested that something was going wrong.

Some have even been left in the dark because even smart devices such as Google Home have stopped working, preventing users from turning the lights on or off. Navigation services such as Google Maps were also down, good luck for those who had saved the route of their journey.

And more blackouts for the Google Play Store, Duo, Google Translate, for the video-making platform Youtube (now owned by the giant Google for a few years).

Causes

The Mountain View giant immediately communicated the reasons related to this sudden collapse, but there is no shortage of theories that do not believe the official version of the Californian giant. Could a simple increase in capacity have triggered all this and justify the continuous collapses that are still occurring?

In fact, there are many who argue that the malfunction may be linked to hacker attacks that have targeted various realities worldwide, including the one against the United States.

What would have happened without the Cloud? What would happen to our data?

In summary, these 50 minutes have certainly kept the world in suspense, schools, businesses, institutions have had a sudden STOP.

But we wondered how much the Cloud was our faithful ally during the general lockdown period? It has allowed companies to facilitate remote work, and schools to be at the side of students thanks to DaD.

Certainly the advantages of living in a world that is always connected are many, can we turn a blind eye to the end of a year that has put us to the test?