On December 14th, Google suffered a global paralysis, and its Gmail mailbox, Google Calendar, video site YouTube and other services were all affected, but most of the search engine business was still intact.
According to the British "Guardian" reported on the same day, the large-scale paralysis of Google’s services began at about 11: 50 am GMT on December 14th, which affected most of its services. Despite the large-scale interruption of services, Google’s corporate automation system reported that there were no problems with any services until the service was interrupted for 30 minutes, including consumer services and cloud services for developers.
At 12: 25, Google finally found the problem and said publicly: "We found a problem … that affected most users, and the affected users could not access Google services."
The Guardian reported that Google’s problems this time seem to be related to the company’s authentication tool, which manages how users log in to services run by Google and third-party developers. This means that tools that cannot be used without logging in, such as Gmail email and Google Calendar, will be completely unusable. In the third-party service that logs in through Google authentication platform, users can use it normally if they have logged in, but they can’t use it if they need to log in again.
However, even if you have logged in with a Google account, the service of YouTube, a video site, can’t be used at all, and users can only access it through "private browsing" mode, thus using the site in logout mode.
For users who use Google Suite to work, this service interruption has seriously affected their normal work.
Google Suite involves not only email communication, Chat and Meet applications within the company, but also all the work done through Google Docs, sheet and slide. Some users who use third-party office applications have also been affected, such as Slack, an internal chat tool of Salesforce, where users can only chat with colleagues who have logged in at the time of interruption.
For people who work from home, Google’s service paralysis has also affected Google’s smart home services, including Google Home smart speakers, Nest thermostats and smoke alarms. They can only run in fail-safe mode, and users cannot access services and change settings through applications.