Last Thursday (June 12, 2025), the internet took a serious hit. Around midday in India, reports started flooding in: Google Cloud outages, Spotify down, Cloudflare outage, internet outage, Google outage today, and more. This wasn’t a tiny glitch—it affected millions worldwide. Platforms like Spotify, Discord, Snapchat, and even Google Meet went offline. People frantically asked: “is spotify down right now?”, “is google cloud down?”, “google down?”, “is snapchat down?”—and the answer in every case was a tough “yes.” Downdetector lit up like a Christmas tree.
What is Downdetector and Why It Matters
When things go wrong on the internet, people report it to Downdetector. It’s like a giant detective that watches for spikes in complaints. On June 12, Downdetector recorded triple-digit spikes for Spotify outage, google cloud outage, discord down?, snapchat down, cloudflare down, google outage, and even general internet outages. People typed “is spotify down?” or “is google outage?” hundreds of thousands of times.
The Real Cause: Google Cloud Outage
Behind most of these failures was a big problem at Google Cloud—also known as GCP (Google Cloud Platform). Starting around 11:30 a.m. PT (Indian time around midnight), GCP outages began. Services like speech-to-text, BigQuery, Cloud Memorystore, Cloud Workstations, and more were disrupted. That’s a lot of core services.
Because many websites and apps rely on GCP, when it crashes, everything crashes. Even Cloudflare, which runs millions of websites and protects them against attacks, felt the impact. It relies partly on Google Cloud for certain services (like Workers KV), so it also went down.
Which Services Died?
Here’s what silently died that afternoon:
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Spotify: Music lovers around the globe were kicked offline—millions asked “is spotify down?”
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Discord: Gamers and chat Junkies lost their chat. discord down detector lit up.
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Snapchat: Teens couldn’t send Snaps. “is snapchat down?” skyrocketed.
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Google services: Gmail, Google Drive, Docs, Meet, Calendar, Voice, Tasks—all hit. People asked “google meet outage”, “google services down”.
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Cloudflare: Some sites couldn’t even load. cloudflare outage today was trending.
Other apps like Twitch, Replit, Character AI, and Shopify took hits too—all because they used Google Cloud.
Timeline: What Happened When
Let’s break it down, step by step:
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10:51 a.m. PT (Thursday) – Google Cloud reports an incident. Multiple services start failing.
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11:19 a.m. PT – Cloudflare status page notes authentication issues.
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11:30–12 p.m. PT – Downdetector flags 13,000+ error reports for GCP. Apps like Spotify, Discord, Snapchat hit at same time.
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12:12 p.m. PT – Cloudflare starts partial recovery.
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12:41 p.m. PT – Google identifies root cause.
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2:09 p.m. CST / 3 p.m. ET – Cloudflare/KV and some Google services recover.
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By evening – Most services back online; full impact lasts about 2 hours and 28 minutes. Cloudflare confirms Workers KV storage issue.
Why Did This Happen?
Cloudflare explained it clearly: “Workers KV”—a storage system used for configuration, authentication, and caches—relies on a third-party cloud (that means Google Cloud). When that third party had a storage failure, Cloudflare’s services collapsed.
Google also said its storage infrastructure dealing with API requests had issues. That hit many of its own services (Gmail, Drive, Meet, etc.).
It wasn’t caused by an attack or hacker—it was a technical fault, a “failure in storage infrastructure” that affected a huge chunk of the cloud.
What People Said Online
Reddit users and tweets captured the panic:
“AWS wasn’t down. Cloudflare uses GCP to back some of their services, notably Workers KV, it would seem.” thedailybeast.comreddit.com
“Google cloud is having an outage and that’s taking Replit down. We’re working with them to bring it back up ASAP.” —Replit CEO Amjad Masad on Twitter techcrunch.com+1businessinsider.com+1
At the time, some users joked: “Is this the end of the internet?” thedailybeast.com
What Was DownDetector Showing?
Downdetector (often mistyped as “down detector” or “down‑detector”, or “downdetector spotify”) showed massive spikes:
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Spotify: Over 46,000 reports at peak.
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Discord: More than 11,000 issues.
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Google services: 10,800+ reports.
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Snapchat: 3,500+ reports.
It was a spike across global internet outage, not just India or US. So people asked: “global internet outage? Why is spotify not working? Internet down?” and yes, it was widespread.
Cloudflare Status Updates
Cloudflare kept updating its status page in real-time:
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Noted broad outage at 1:19 p.m. CST.
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At 2:09 p.m., confirmed some regions had recovered, but no ETA on full fix.
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By 8:56 p.m. UTC, everything restored; users national/ global no longer facing errors.
Google’s own Google Cloud Service Health page confirmed the incident ran from June 12, 2025 at 10:51 a.m. PDT to 6:18 p.m. PDT.
How Did They Fix It?
Once the storage issue was identified, engineers applied mitigations—temporary fixes. Cloudflare restored Workers KV. Google restored API systems and storage layers. Services returned in waves: first essential ones (like Gmail, Drive), then apps (Spotify, Discord). Recovery took just over 2 hours, but full stability stretched longer—some regions recovered slower.
Who Wasn’t Affected
It seems AWS and Microsoft Azure were unaffected. That’s why Reddit noted: “AWS wasn’t down.” So cloud users on those platforms didn’t see this huge crash.
Lessons Learned
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Big cloud = big risk: Over-dependency on GCP by many companies meant one failure hit millions.
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Cloudflare isn’t immune: Even protection services rely on other clouds.
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Multiple monitors matter: Downdetector helps users and companies see problems quickly.
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Transparency helps: Cloudflare and Google posted clear updates—no guesswork.
Quick Q&A
Q: Was Spotify down?
A: Yes—music lovers worldwide faced a spotify outage today, logging up to 46,000 reports. Poor timing for playlists!
Q: Was Google Down?
A: Mostly yes. Many Google services down, including Drive, Meet, Calendar, Docs, and Gmail.
Q: Is Snapchat down?
A: Yup—reports spiked by over 3,500.
Q: Why did it happen?
A: A storage failure in Google Cloud’s infra, which affected dependencies like Cloudflare’s Workers KV. No hacking—pure technical failure.
Q: Were other clouds affected?
A: No, AWS and Azure stayed up. Only Google Cloud had issues that day, but it was enough to bring down a chunk of the internet.
Final Word: Why It Matters
This event showed how fragile our online world is—even when giant companies build “cloud-proof” systems. One weak link (GCP storage) brought down Spotify, Google Meet, Cloudflare, Discord, Snapchat, and more.
Are we vulnerable? Yeah. But we’re learning. These failures push companies to build better backup plans, diversify their infrastructure, and update transparency for users. Downdetector asks “is the internet down?” now we’ve all seen what a “yes” looks like. Next time? We’ll be ready.
Sources:
https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-service-outage-june-12-2025/https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/12/tech/internet-outage-spotify-discord-cloudflare-googlehttps://www.tomsguide.com/news/live/google-cloud-down-jun-12-outage
