DOMINANT ANGLE
Islamabad views the London Google Cloud outage as an infrastructure failure: a local power outage that affected Revolut, banks, and the British judiciary.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
KEY POINTS
- 01
According to Daily Times, the disruption began at 06:08 GMT Tuesday in Google Cloud's europe-west2 region in London.
- 02
Geo News attributes the outage to a "power event" in Google's sole British cloud region, and cites Revolut (over 80 million customers) as one of the most affected services.
- 03
Geo News reports that the video platform of HM Courts and Tribunals Service was affected and that the Criminal Bar Association warned that trials and hearings could not proceed.
ANALYSIS
Islamabad, October 20, 2026. The Pakistani press is treating the Google Cloud outage as an infrastructure incident with cascading effects. Daily Times reports that Google Cloud reported network disruptions in its London data center on Tuesday, with "high errors and intermittent network outages" in the europe-west2 region. According to the newspaper, the incident began at 06:08 GMT and Google had provided no cause.
Geo News, in an article dated October 20, 2026, speaks of a "major outage" following a "power event" in Google's sole British cloud region, around 07:00 BST. Google indicated that the power event was "mitigated", with a partial restoration of infrastructure services expected within 30 minutes, and other services to follow; the underlying cause remained unconfirmed.
Both media outlets put Revolut in the spotlight. Geo News writes that the digital bank, with over 80 million customers worldwide, saw thousands of users unable to pay, access their funds, or reach support. Revolut assured that its customers' "money and data" were "safe". Daily Times specifies that a source close to the matter links its difficulties to the Google outage and that the bank apologized to affected customers.
The extent of the damage is described as follows: hundreds of reports on Downdetector for Lloyds, HSBC, Rightmove, and Royal Mail according to Daily Times; Halifax and Lloyds according to Geo News. Geo adds that the video conferencing platform of HM Courts and Tribunals Service was affected and that the Criminal Bar Association warned that lawyers in England and Wales could not proceed with trials and hearings.
Daily Times draws the general lesson that a cloud infrastructure problem can affect several online services at once, and companies that depend on these platforms are exposed to interruptions. The newspaper also refers, in further reading links, to a 400 million pound British contract with Google Cloud and to a Google Cloud event for Pakistani startups, without commenting on them.
