Update 9:56 a.m. ET: Google News is back online, but for many, Google Discover is still down.
Google News is currently experiencing an unexplained outage that has taken the service offline for millions of users around the world.
whom DownDetector reported on this (and adapted from Tom’s Guide’s own experience) news aggregator is currently crashing on its desktop page as well as its iOS and Android apps. Although some users claim that Search is also affected, I have not been able to replicate this myself.
Reports of the site experiencing problems began to surface at 7.59am ET / 12.59pm today, May 31st, and Google has yet to make any official statement regarding the cause of the issue.
Users from Ohio and Florida to the United States are reporting problems, as are Tom’s Guide team members across the UK from London (where I’m located) to Manchester. Other regions such as India, Canada and continental Europe are also reporting problems.
Apparently, Google Discover also suffers and simply restores old cached content. We have no idea when this issue will be fixed, but given the scope of Google’s News service, it’s likely that this outage will affect millions of people right now.
Of course, many people turn to X to test if the service actually works, with a few jokes thrown in for good measure.
The Google News hack is extremely disappointing.May 31, 2024
Either google news is out of order or defense cuts are really a thing. pic.twitter.com/Pe91Tg0afmMay 31, 2024
Google News IS BREAKING 🔥 pic.twitter.com/AmmIFmtFhtMay 31, 2024
It hasn’t been a good week for Google. A few days ago, it was revealed that more than 2,500 pages of API documentation were posted online, revealing secrets about how Google’s Search algorithm works. Liz Reid, head of the company’s search department, also admitted blog post Google’s new AI Review feature gave some pretty questionable answers to user questions that later went viral on social media.
“Like our users, we hold ourselves to high standards, so we expect and value feedback and take it seriously,” he said.
Tom’s Guide has reached out to Google for comment on the current Google News outage, and we’ll update this article when/when we hear back.
This story is developing…
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