Banks and courts affected by disruption as Google apologises for cloud outage

Several financial institutions and legal services experienced disruption on Tuesday as a result of a cloud outage affecting Google's services. Revolut, a company with millions of UK customers, reported problems with its systems, including card payments, transfers and cash withdrawals. The cloud video platform used in trials by courts across the country was also down, impacting live streams from courts.

Google stated that a "power event" in its "Europe-west2" region, believed to be located in London, caused the outage and led to multiple cloud services experiencing errors and intermittent network failures. By early Tuesday afternoon, Google reported that it was seeing the "recovery of services for most workloads" in the region.

The company advised affected customers to try migrating their impacted workloads to another available location. Revolut and other affected firms assured customers that their money and data were safe. HM Courts & Tribunals Service experienced issues with its cloud video platform, but the judge for the rape and sexual assault trial of Russell Brand reported that the problem had been resolved.

Many users of Lloyds Bank, HSBC and other platforms reported issues, as well as budgeting app Emma. Google's cloud outage in London disrupted a significant portion of online services, highlighting the potential widespread impact of such disruptions.