Google Services Were Down in Türkiye, Parts of Europe

Alsharq Tribune- Ahmed Essam 

Some Google services including YouTube temporarily went down on Thursday in Türkiye and some parts of Europe including Greece and Germany, according to a Turkish deputy minister, internet monitors and users in the regions.

The Freedom of Expression Association, which monitors local censorship on the internet, said the outage on Alphabet's Google began around 10:00 a.m. (0700 GMT) in Türkiye.

Tracking website Downdetector said services were mostly restored before 0900 GMT, with the number of reports of service disruptions decreasing from 0751 GMT onward.

Google did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on the matter. Türkiye’s cyber security watchdog has requested a technical report from Google, deputy transport and infrastructure minister Omer Fatih Sayan said on X.

A map posted by Sayan showed Türkiye, large parts of southeast Europe, and some locations in Ukraine, Russia and western Europe as affected. There were sporadic outages in Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania, including problems accessing websites, YouTube and some phone contacts linked to Gmail, users there said.

In Germany, outage tracking website allestoerungen.de, a division of US-based Ookla, reported an uptick in Google disruptions from around 09:00 a.m.