Google is back online after a software issue caused brief outage that affected thousands of users worldwide

Google went dark yesterday night after a software issue caused a brief outage that affected thousands of users around the world. We first noticed the outage at around 9.20 p.m. EST.

Outage tracking website Downdetector.com also reported that more than 40,000 people in the US also reported that Google was down for them. Users in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Singapore also reported issues with Google.

As of 11.38 AM, there were 4,113 confirmed reports of Google outages.

User reports indicate Google is having problems since 9:12 PM EDT. https://t.co/MK35emuk7T RT if you're also having problems #Googledown

— Downdetector (@downdetector) August 9, 2022

The issue quickly went viral on social media with the hashtag #GoogleDown trending. While some users joked about trying to search on Google to check if the popular search engine was down.

The outage was brief and Google was back online early Tuesday. In a statement, Google apologized and blamed the problem on “a software update issue” that occurred Monday afternoon and “briefly affected” the availability of Google’s Search and Maps services.

A spokesperson for the search giant said the team had “worked quickly” to address the fault and services were back running as normal.

“We’re aware of a software update issue that occurred late this afternoon Pacific Time and briefly affected availability of Google search and Maps,” they said.

“We apologize for the inconvenience. We worked to quickly address the issue and our services are now back online.”

Overall, more than 1,300 Google servers in 40 countries were affected, including the United States, Britain, Australia, South Africa, Japan, China, and Singapore.