Jul 21, 2026 | Posted by Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji
Google Cloud suffered an outage in the Netherlands after a data center experienced a loss of utility power and cooling capacity. The Europe-West4 availability zone was affected for nearly 15 hours, impacting services including Google Cloud VMware Engine, Bare Metal Solution, and Google Cloud NetApp Volumes. Services were restored on July 16.
"An electrical fault occurred on the utility grid upstream of the data center, disrupting the electrical distribution gear and cooling equipment. The loss of cooling infrastructure resulted in ambient temperatures rising rapidly within the affected data halls. Host servers, storage clusters, and network switches were shut down to prevent equipment damages due to the extreme heat," it added.
Google operates multiple data centers in the Netherlands, including sites in Eemshaven, Middenmeer, and Winschoten, with another facility under development near Groningen. The company also faced cloud disruptions in India earlier this year after a fire at a third-party STT GDC/Tata data center forced an emergency power shutdown and reduced network capacity in Delhi.
