Google Cloud said on 20 October 2026 that multiple services in its europe-west2 region, which its website lists as London, have had issues since 06:08 UTC. Its status page names a “power event” that caused an outage within the europe-west2-b zone, and lists 38 affected products.
U.K. banks including Revolut and Lloyds reported disruption to their services, The Wall Street Journal reported. Google’s incident record gives an end time of 14:00 UTC, about eight hours after the start by our arithmetic, and its final update says the issue “has been mitigated for most of the customers.”
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The key insight: As we read it, Google’s own record puts the trigger in a single zone, europe-west2-b, while the issues it lists reached 38 products across the europe-west2 region.
Google’s incident record says the issue began on Monday, 19 October 2026 at 23:08 PDT, which is 06:08 UTC on Tuesday. Its first posted update, at 08:35 UTC, said multiple services were “experiencing elevated errors and intermittent network failures in europe-west2 region” and listed no workaround.
At 11:12 UTC Google wrote that “due to a power event we had suffered an outage within europe-west2-b zone” and that “the power event is mitigated.” By 11:58 UTC it said it was prioritising the recovery of existing workloads, and that customers “may not be able to yet create new workloads.”
The 12:44 UTC update says Google is “seeing the recovery of services for most workloads in europe-west2” as of 05:10 PDT. It still listed the symptom that “Google Cloud services are unavailable in europe-west2-b zone,” and advised customers who could to move affected workloads to another zone or region. The 38 affected products it lists include Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, BigQuery and Cloud Run.
Google’s final update, at 14:03 UTC, says the issue “has been mitigated for most of the customers and it is believed to be affecting currently a very small number of customers.” It says no further updates will be provided there, and that “We will publish an analysis of this incident once we have completed our internal investigation.”
Update, 20 October: Google Says Full Service Restored as FCA Engages
Google said on Tuesday its cloud services in the UK were back up after an hours-long outage that disrupted several financial firms and public-sector websites, Reuters reported. Per Reuters, Google said engineering teams had restored full service availability following a disruption caused by a “power event” in its europe-west2 cloud region.
A spokesperson for the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority told Reuters: “We are aware of an incident affecting services provided by Google and are engaging with them and affected firms to understand the impact.” Reuters notes that 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, and that Google Cloud was among 19 technology companies designated by EU regulators last year as critical third-party computing providers.
Reuters also reports that Lloyds said it expects its services to be back to normal soon, since the root issues have been resolved, and that HSBC said it was aware of some customers having difficulties accessing its services. As we read it, Reuters’ account ties the incident to the risk the UK cited in July: an outage at one major provider disrupting multiple firms at once.
Google Cloud’s europe-west2 incident as its status page tells it: issues from 06:08 UTC, a power event named in zone europe-west2-b at 11:12 UTC, most workloads recovering by its 12:44 UTC update, and an end time of 14:00 UTC (about eight hours, our arithmetic). The 09:59 UTC entry is Sky News’ post. Sources: Google Cloud Service Health (20 Oct 2026), Sky News.
What Was Posted on X
BREAKING: Multiple online services are down or ‘experiencing issues.’
Google Cloud has reported “issues” in its western Europe region affecting dozens of websites, including; Revolut, Royal Mail and HSBC.
Sky News posted at 09:59 UTC on 20 October 2026 that multiple online services were down or experiencing issues, saying Google Cloud had reported issues in its western Europe region affecting dozens of websites, including Revolut, Royal Mail and HSBC; those names are Sky’s. Google’s own incident record names the region as europe-west2 and traces the outage to a power event in zone europe-west2-b; it names no customers.
Who Reported Disruption
The Wall Street Journal reported that Revolut services such as card payments, transfers, ATM withdrawals, currency exchange and stock trading were unavailable, according to the company’s website. A Revolut Bank spokesperson told the paper: “We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe.” Lloyds told the Journal customers could log into its app normally, but that there had been issues with some online services.
Business Insider reported that Halifax, the budgeting app Emma, the delivery firm DPD and the web host SiteGround also reported problems. Emma said on X it was down “due to a Google Cloud outage affecting services in London since 7 a.m.” Business Insider said some companies attributed their issues to Google Cloud while others named an unnamed third-party provider. It also reported that the U.K. courts and tribunals service had issues with its cloud-based video tools for remote hearings.
Sky News, in a post at 09:59 UTC, said the outage was affecting dozens of websites, including Revolut, Royal Mail and HSBC. The Guardian noted that Revolut and Google Cloud have a strategic partnership under which Revolut uses Google Cloud’s infrastructure to run its services.
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As we read it, the reports describe a wide spread on the same morning: Revolut and Lloyds reported disruption, per The Wall Street Journal, and Business Insider listed problems at Halifax, Emma, DPD, SiteGround and the courts and tribunals service, while noting that not every company named Google Cloud as the cause.
As we read it, Google’s advice during the incident was that, if feasible, customers may try to move affected workloads to another zone or region.
As we read it, the cause Google gives is “a power event” in one zone, europe-west2-b.
Google Cloud Service Health, incident update, 20 October 2026
“Due to a power event we had suffered an outage within europe-west2-b zone”
Three Implications
ONE ZONE, MANY SERVICESGoogle lists 38 affected products for an outage it traces to a power event in one zone.
RECOVERY CAME IN STAGESGoogle says existing workloads were restored first, and that customers might not yet be able to create new ones.
AN ANALYSIS IS PROMISEDGoogle says it will publish an analysis once its internal investigation is complete.
The framework puts it this way: “The structural bottleneck isn’t computing, it’s electrons.”
As we read it, this outage fits that frame from the operations side: Google names a power event in one London zone as the cause. The framework was published in December 2025 and does not discuss this incident.
What Is Not Established
Google has not said how many customers were affected or what caused the power event; it says a small number of customers were still affected at its final update and that an analysis will follow its internal investigation. Several companies have not publicly tied their problems to Google Cloud; Revolut’s link was reported by Business Insider through a person familiar with the matter. Royal Mail and HSBC appear in Sky News’ post, and we have not seen statements from either company.
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Google says a power event in one London zone, europe-west2-b, led to issues across 38 listed products in its europe-west2 region from 06:08 UTC on 20 October 2026, with an end time of 14:00 UTC in its incident record. Banks and apps from Revolut to Lloyds reported disruption on the same morning, and Google says it will publish an analysis.
A note on sourcing. This piece is built on Google Cloud’s incident record as read at about 15:20 UTC on 20 October 2026, The Wall Street Journal’s and Business Insider’s reports, read in full, The Guardian and Sky News, plus our own earlier pieces. The UTC conversions of Google’s PDT times and the roughly eight-hour duration are our arithmetic. Google says it will publish an analysis of the incident. Nothing here is financial or investment advice.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
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