Google Cloud said it had mitigated service problems for most customers after an outage lasting 7 hours, 52 minutes in its London region, as a UK committee chair sought details on effects on financial firms and consumers.
Google’s incident record places the disruption between 2:08 a.m. ET (06:08 UTC) and 10 a.m. ET (14:00 UTC) on Oct. 20. The company attributed interruptions across multiple products in europe-west2-b to a power event. It warned that other services in the europe-west2 region could see elevated errors and intermittent network problems. The affected-product list included Google Compute Engine, Google Cloud Storage and Cloud Run.
At 10:03 a.m. ET (14:03 UTC), Google Cloud said the impact had been mitigated for most customers, while a very small number could remain affected. It said it would publish an incident analysis after an internal investigation.
HM Treasury designated Google Cloud EMEA Limited a Critical Third Party for the financial sector, with regulators’ oversight beginning July 13, 2026. The Bank of England, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) jointly oversee the resilience of designated providers’ critical services. The Bank has warned that reliance on a common technology supplier can allow operational disruption to reach multiple firms or markets.
Revolut separately reported problems across multiple services on Oct. 20. The company said customers’ money and data were safe, but its public notice did not identify a cause. At about 6 p.m. ET (22:00 UTC), Revolut’s UK status page showed all systems as operational.
Treasury Committee Chair Dame Meg Hillier asked the Bank of England and the FCA to estimate how widely UK firms and consumers were affected, establish how long service interruptions lasted, and assess any consumer losses or other harm. Hillier asked for an initial reply by Nov. 4 and a complete response by Jan. 20, 2027.
