In what comes as a major outage for the tech giant, most Google services — including Gmail and YouTube — stopped working on Monday (December 14) evening.
As on the time of writing, Google is yet to officially respond, however, the status page for its services seems to have acknowledged the issue.
As one could not ask Google what's wrong, netizens turned to Twitter to check if there was a major outage.
It soon became clear, however, that our lives are intertwined with Google services more than what we would care to admit. A number of such daily tasks were affected when Google ran into the technical snag.
As journalist Joe Brown lamented on Twitter — the light controlled by Google Home, a smart home gadget automation tool — turned off in a trice during the outage, and he was left in the darkness in his toddlers room.
"Rethinking... a lot right now," Brown said.
The Google Home app helps one set up and control Google Nest, Google Home, and Chromecast devices for a 'smart' automated home. One can control thousands of compatible lights, cameras, speakers, WiFi, thermostats and more, all from a single app, as well as see reminders and recent notifications from it.
In this day and age, consumers really seem to be living the 'futuristic' life, with them increasingly converting their "dumb" residences into 'smart homes' with home automation. The industry is booming, and everything from playing music to switching on lights to checking up on loved ones, can be done on one tap and for even high-tech folks, with one voice command on the chosen automation app.
However, in case of technical snags like these, when Google runs to the ground and we are left in the darkness to 'rethink', we have to consider — are 'smart' homes really such a smart idea?
The list of services affected today by the widespread outage seems to be, according to the status page for its services — YouTube, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Classroom, Google Docs, and YouTube TV, among other services.
The other major services affected are Google Calendar, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Sites, Google Groups, Google Hangouts, Google Chat, Google Meet, Google Vault, Currents, Google Keep, Google Tasks, Google Voice, and Google Cloud Search.
According to website health tracker Downdetector, users around the world are experiencing the problem, which peaked around 5 PM.
