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A significant outage has left Google users across the United States unable to access their private data. According to Downdetector, the disruption has affected Google Drive, preventing users from opening documents like Google Sheets or Docs. This outage has impacted everyday activities, such as cloud storage, real-time collaboration, and device syncing.
The issue began on Wednesday (June 12) when Google Cloud and Google Workspace products experienced increased 503 errors in external API requests, as reported by Google Cloud's status page. The outage was caused by an invalid automated quota update to the API management system, which was globally distributed, leading to rejected external API requests. Recovery efforts bypassed the faulty quota check, restoring services in most regions within two hours. However, the us-central1 region experienced longer recovery times due to an overloaded quota policy database.
The outage has affected users' ability to access files and collaborate on projects, causing significant disruptions in both personal and professional settings. Google has apologized for the incident and is committed to making improvements to prevent future outages. A full incident report detailing the root cause and remediation steps will be published in the coming days.