For much of Tuesday morning, paying for a coffee in Britain could turn into a puzzle. Shortly after 7am, a fault Google described as a “power event” knocked out part of its London cloud region, known as europe-west2. Soon the effects spread far beyond the data centre.
Revolut customers could not log in, pay by card, transfer money or withdraw cash. The digital bank assured users that “all our customers’ money and data are safe”. Lloyds and its subsidiary Halifax reported login trouble, and HSBC clients complained that they could not reach their accounts. Error reports also piled up for the property site Rightmove, the courier DPD and Royal Mail, which said letters and parcels were still being delivered. The budgeting app Emma went dark too.
The disruption reached the justice system as well. The video platform that lets defendants in custody and their lawyers join hearings remotely in England and Wales stopped working all morning, delaying several cases.
By lunchtime, the company reported that the electrical fault was under control. By 3pm British time most customers were back online, and later the company reported that full service had been restored. It has promised a detailed analysis once its internal investigation is done.
For regulators, it is an awkward debut. Since July, Britain’s financial watchdogs, the FCA and the Bank of England, have been allowed to supervise Google Cloud directly, together with Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle, because banks rely on them so heavily. Both are now pressing Google for details. Experts said the episode shows once more how dependent banks have become on a handful of tech giants, and how one faulty site can trip up companies several links down the chain.
