Google Cloud has restored its services in the United Kingdom following an hours-long outage that disrupted several financial institutions and public-sector websites, raising fresh concerns about the growing dependence on a handful of technology providers.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, confirmed on Tuesday that its UK cloud services were back online after the disruption affected businesses and online services across the country.
The incident has renewed concerns among UK and European Union regulators about the financial sector’s reliance on external technology companies, particularly cloud providers that support essential banking operations.
British digital bank Revolut said the outage affected several of its services, including card payments and ATM withdrawals. However, the company reassured customers that their money and personal data remained safe.
Google Identifies Power Disruption as Cause
Google said its engineering teams had restored full service availability following a disruption caused by a “power event” in its europe-west2 cloud region.
The region, based in London, consists of multiple data centres and availability zones that provide cloud services to customers across Europe.
The outage highlighted the potential consequences of technical problems at major cloud providers, whose infrastructure supports services used by numerous businesses and public institutions.
In July, the UK brought Google Cloud, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Oracle under direct regulatory oversight as critical third-party suppliers to the financial sector.
The move was intended to address concerns that an outage at a major technology provider could disrupt multiple financial institutions simultaneously.
Google Cloud was also among 19 technology companies designated by EU regulators last year as critical third-party computing providers relied upon by the bloc’s financial industry.
A spokesperson for the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority said the regulator was monitoring the incident.
“We are aware of an incident affecting services provided by Google and are engaging with them and affected firms to understand the impact,” the spokesperson said.
Banks and Public Services Among Those Affected
Earlier on Tuesday, users reported problems with several services through Downdetector, a platform that tracks service disruptions by aggregating reports from different sources, including users.
Among the services affected were Lloyds Bank, HSBC, property website Rightmove, parcel delivery company DPD, NHS England and Royal Mail.
Lloyds said it expected its services to return to normal soon after the underlying problems were resolved.
HSBC confirmed that it was aware of difficulties experienced by some customers trying to access its services.
Royal Mail also acknowledged the disruption but said letter and parcel deliveries had not been affected.
Rightmove, DPD and NHS England had not immediately responded to requests for comment.
Meanwhile, German bank ING reported problems with its website and mobile application. However, the bank said there was no indication that the disruption resulted from an external cause or was connected to third-party service providers.
The incident has highlighted the risks associated with the growing concentration of essential digital services among a small number of cloud companies, particularly as banks and public institutions increasingly depend on their infrastructure.
Although Google has restored its UK services, the disruption has renewed questions about how financial institutions and public-sector organisations can reduce the impact of outages affecting major technology providers.
