Google services went down across Turkey and several Eastern European countries today, with users reporting issues accessing Google's search engine, as well as platforms such as Gmail, YouTube, Gemini, Analytics and Maps.
Monitoring services Downdetector and Outage Report confirmed widespread disruptions in at least 24 countries, including Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and North Macedonia. While reports were concentrated in Eastern Europe, fewer disruptions were recorded in the US and Europe's west.
The outage began at around 9 am Turkish time (GMT+3) and lasted for nearly two hours.
Websites that rely on Google Ads, including many news outlets in Turkey, appeared without advertisements during the outage. However, disruptions in accessing Ads, Analytics and other professional services significantly slowed down those sites, including bianet.
Turkish autorities were following up with Google on the issue, Deputy Transport and Infrastructure Minister Ömer Fatih Sayan said on social media. “Our National Cyber Incident Response Center (@trcert) has requested a technical report from Google regarding the cause of the outage. We are closely monitoring the process,” he wrote.
“These outages show how crucial it is to use national products and software," he added. "For this reason, we have worked extensively to increase the rate of domestic production in both the software and hardware of 5G. Our current localization rate is 60 percent, and we will continue to increase it.”
The company has not released a statement regarding the cause of the outage. (VK)
