Google, Spotify, more online services recovering after apparent widespread issue

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to amend information about Amazon Web Services and include a statement from the company.

(NEXSTAR) — Numerous websites and online services, including Google services, Spotify, DoorDash, and more, were starting to return to normal after widespread outages on Thursday afternoon.

Outage tracker Downdetector showed dozens of sites and services experienced increased rates of user-reported issues, with reports starting to spike shortly after 2 p.m. ET.

More than 40,000 such reports were filed for Spotify alone. There, users said they were unable to load or use the app. For Discord, more than 12,000 users reported issues sending messages or establishing a server connection. Other sites, apps, and services with reported problems included Snapchat, Pokémon Go, Etsy, Fubo, and Mailchimp.

Thousands of users also reported problems accessing or using Google resources, like its website, Cloud, Meet, Nest, Drive, and Gmail. The company's Search status dashboard showed no incidents as of Thursday afternoon. The Workspace dashboard initially had the same message before linking to an update posted shortly before 4 p.m. ET said that the problem impacting several services — Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Chat, Google Cloud Search, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Meet, Google Tasks, and Google Voice — had been resolved.

The Google Cloud status site, meanwhile, showed worldwide incidents had been reported. A notice posted on the status site around 3 p.m. ET reported that "multiple [Cloud] products are experiencing impact due to Identity and Access Management Service Issue."

After reporting that its engineering team was investigating the issue, a notice on the status site said the root cause had been identified and "appropriate mitigations" had been applied.

By 6:15 p.m. ET, the company said most of its Cloud products had fully recovered, but acknowledged there could be some "residual impact."

Google Cloud offers computing services to companies, essentially hosting their apps, data, and more. One company listed as a Google Cloud client, Shopify, also saw a spike in outage reports on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Spotify users who reported issues accessing the streaming service were instructed by the company's support account on X to try a different browser, with one post specifically asking if the user was experiencing a problem "only with [Google] Chrome."

In response to posts remarking on issues with its services, however, Google responded that "there aren't any known service disruptions" before asking the users to "try clearing cache & cookies."

Cloudflare, which also supports online services, saw a spike in outage reports as well. A notice on the company's site said its Workers KV service went offline "due to an outage of a 3rd party service that is a key dependency." Shortly before 5 p.m. ET, Cloudflare reported that its services had been restored and were fully operational.

Downdetector users were also reporting problems with Amazon Web Services, but the company told Nexstar it was not experiencing any issues on Thursday.

"Currently there are no broad service issues with AWS," a spokesperson told Nexstar. "Our services are operating normally. The only resource on the internet that provides accurate data on the availability of our services is the AWS Health Dashboard."

Outage reports on Downdetector for the impacted sites and services started to decline shortly after 3 p.m. ET.