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A “power event” at Google Cloud’s London data center rippled across the U.K. on Oct. 20, disrupting banking apps, delivery operations, and remote court hearings.
The outage highlights how heavily major services depend on a small group of cloud providers.
Here’s what to know
As the BBC reported, Revolut, Lloyds Bank, HSBC, Royal Mail, DPD, Forest, and HM Courts and Tribunals Service were among the organizations affected.
Google Cloud said multiple services at its London “europe-west2” site were experiencing problems and later began to recover. Revolut received more than 1,500 outage reports shortly after 8 a.m.
A spokesperson attributed the outage to a third-party issue, adding that “all our customers’ money and data are safe.”
“Today I was unable to pay for my parking at a shopping center because my Revolut account wasn’t working properly,” 25-year-old Glasgow resident Rachael Ellen told the BBC. “This left me in a difficult situation as I had no way to access the money I needed at the time.”
Others also reported trouble accessing money while abroad and difficulties completing property purchases.
More background
For smaller firms, the outage quickly became an operational problem. Guy Baybutt, of the family-run The Veg Box Company in Preston, told the BBC the business was unable to reach its website to retrieve and process customer orders.
He also said the company couldn’t book parcels into DPD’s collection system, putting orders scheduled to go out on Oct. 20 in jeopardy.
Because the business ships perishable produce nationwide, even a short disruption created a serious risk of missed deliveries.
Remote hearings were also disrupted, with HM Courts and Tribunals Service reporting an outage on the video platform it uses.
“Google Cloud’s outage is a reminder of how deeply our economies depend on just a handful of cloud providers,” said Prof Feng Li of Bayes Business School.
The outage coincided with the anniversary of an Amazon Web Services failure in October 2025 at its largest cloud site, which knocked more than 1,000 sites offline for hours.
What’s being done?
Later on Oct. 20, Google Cloud said the incident had been “mitigated for most of the customers” and that only a limited number of users were still believed to be affected. It also apologized “to all who are affected by the disruption.”
The company said it would publish a review of the incident once its internal investigation is finished.
Companies relying on the affected systems were also working to fully restore services.
“We understand the root issues have been resolved, so we expect all our services to be back to normal soon,” a Lloyds spokesperson told the BBC.
Baybutt admitted it was frustrating “that a technical failure completely outside our control brought so much of our business to a standstill.”
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