Late on Tuesday, Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, among other services, grappled with prolonged outages impacting a significant user base. Meta acknowledged the issues and successfully resolved them. At the same time, another tech giant, Google, also faced brief disruptions.
During the outages, Facebook users encountered error messages and were automatically logged out, facing difficulty logging back in. Meanwhile, Instagram users found themselves unable to refresh their feeds or access new content. Following the restoration of Instagram and Facebook to normal operation, Google’s services began experiencing issues.
According to the outage tracking website Downdetector, Google services, including YouTube and Gmail, began encountering similar problems around 9 PM IST. However, unlike Meta’s widespread disruption, Google received only a limited number of outage reports. Downdetector observed a decrease in issue reports between 10:30 and 11:00 PM.
The outage was officially acknowledged, with YouTube confirming it on March 5 at 9:58 PM, stating, “thanks to everyone who sent notes about loading issues with YouTube: we’re on it!” In a subsequent update around 12:30 PM, YouTube informed users, “Quick update for everyone: this is now fixed. Please let us know if you’re still experiencing any loading issues!”
Google also confirmed the return to normal operation for Gmail, attributing the downtime to a surge in traffic. “We saw a surge in traffic starting around 7:25 AM Pacific Time on March 5, and we scaled up our systems to serve the additional load,” Google stated.
In summary, Meta’s platforms experienced extended outages late on Tuesday, with Facebook and Instagram users facing disruption before the issues were resolved. Subsequently, Google encountered brief disruptions affecting services like YouTube and Gmail, which were swiftly addressed by the company.
