A huge outage has hit hundreds of websites and apps due to an issue with the Google Cloud service. 

Several banking apps, Royal Mail and Rightmove are just some of the services affected by the outage, which began at around 7am BST this morning. 

According to Google, the London region is affected.

The tech giant said its engineering team is investigating the ⁠issue, which affected the London-based europe-west2 data center.

In a message posted to its Cloud Status page at 12:12 BST, Google says: 'We are experiencing an issue with multiple services in europe-west2 beginning on Monday, 2026-10-19 23:08 PDT.

'Due to a power event we had suffered an outage within europe-west2-b zone. The power event is mitigated. 

'Partial mitigation to infrastructure services will be observed within the next 30 minutes and the remaining services will be mitigated there after.'

The company added: 'We will provide an update by Tuesday, 2026-10-20 05:00 PDT with current details. We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption.'

According to Down Detector, which tracks service outages, sites experiencing issues include Rightmove, Halifax, Lloyds Bank, Revolut, HSBC, and Royal Mail.

However, the issues also extend to vital services such as NHS England and the courts.

According to the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), the outage has 'hampered' barristers' efforts to clear the court backlogs.

In a post on X, the CBA wrote: 'Cloud Video Platform (CVP) is down across large parts of England and Wales since 10am.

'Many of us today, both as prosecution and defence counsel, can not proceed with trials and other hearings. Our work to clear backlogs is hampered.'

Likewise, HM Courts and Tribunals Service wrote on X: 'We're aware of an issue affecting Cloud Video Platform (CVP), used for some remote hearings.' 

The judge in the Russell Brand trial, Mr Justice Bennathan, decided to continue with the proceedings despite a number of people being unable to join remotely.

Some people who would have been watching online were able to take up extra seats in the courtroom, but many were unable to follow the trial as the fourth complainant started giving her evidence.  

A large number of banking apps have also been affected, leaving users unable to send or receive payments. 

By 9.00am, Down Detector showed 480 user-submitted reports of disruption affecting the Lloyds Bank app and website.

Of those affected customers, 36 per cent said they were unable to log in, 31 per cent said they could not use online banking, while a further 25 per cent said they could not use the app. 

Halifax Bank wrote on X that the company was 'aware some customers are having issues with our app and online.'

Likewise, the budgeting app Emma took to social media to confirm that the outage was 'not a security issue'.

The company wrote: 'Emma is currently down due to a Google Cloud outage affecting services in London since 7am.'

The banking app Revolut also appeared to be partially affected, with customers worldwide unable to open the app, send money, or even make card payments.

On X, one frustrated commenter complained: This morning: Can't buy breakfast. Car is stuck in a paid carpark. Can't pay for taxi or scooter as backup. Probably should be carrying some cash.' 

'Nothing like being stuck in the middle of a city in Japan, unable to pay for literally anything and having to cancel my beauty appointments because my bank @Revolut is having a massive outage,' wrote another.

While one customer said: 'I’m at a petrol station in Australia. Can’t pay for my fuel that I just put in my car.. so I’m just standing in the petrol station highly embarrassed and can’t get home to my kids.'

According to Down Detector, issues began around 8.00am this morning and quickly escalated as users shared hundreds of outage reports.

By 8.02am, Revolut had over 1,458 reports of service disruption.

Of those, 62 per cent of customers said they were having problems with the app, 22 per cent with funds transfer, and nine per cent with mobile banking.

In a post shared on X earlier today, Revolut says: 'We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services. We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe. 

'We’ve been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologise to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused.'

Marijus Briedis, Chief Technology Officer at NordVPN, told the Daily Mail: 'When a cloud outage leaves people unable to make payments or access everyday services, it exposes how much we depend on infrastructure we never see.

'For everyday Google users, this dependence can mean several services they rely on suddenly being unavailable at the same time. Someone unable to pay through one banking app may find their alternative is affected too.' 

Mr Briedis adds that the enormous scope of Google's cloud computing services means that outages might affect businesses whose customers have no idea they depend on the company at all.

These services are typically far cheaper for companies than managing their own servers, and typically extremely reliable.

However, when a major provider does experience a problem, it can have cascading effects due to the number of companies affected.

This outage is the latest in a string of serious service disruptions that have affected cloud services over the last few years. 

Last year, both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services saw major outages that brought 'half the internet' to a standstill.

Together, Amazon and Microsoft's vast data centres, known as 'hyperscalers', host over 60 per cent of the world's cloud services.

So when there is a problem, almost everyone around the world feels the impact.