Google services have suddenly collapsed in Eastern Europe, severely impacting the countries around the Black Sea.

2025-9-4 09:03

This morning at 08:10 Greenwich Mean Time, Google services suddenly went down in several Eastern European countries, with the Balkan region and Black Sea coastal countries, where I am located, being the hardest hit. The situation is particularly severe.

Sitting in front of the computer, I witnessed the collapse of the Google ecosystem with my own eyes—search engines, documents, and emails were all inaccessible, and even YouTube and Spotify were down. What was most unsettling was that this outage clearly targeted specific geographical areas rather than being a global issue.

The countries most severely affected include Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, and other Balkan and Black Sea surrounding countries. Subsequently, reports have also emerged from Western Europe, indicating that the scope of the failure is expanding. Alarmingly, mobile operators in Bulgaria have also reported service interruptions, as they all rely on Google Cloud services—this is precisely what we often refer to as a centralized crisis, isn't it?

What is even more concerning is that other services like Claude and Starlink have also been affected, with Discord servers down and basic communication tools completely paralyzed.

Technical failure or geopolitical maneuvering?

The malfunction is concentrated in the Black Sea region, which makes me wonder if someone is intentionally attacking the internet infrastructure. Interestingly, the affected area just happens to cover the main entry points of the submarine cables connecting Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia.

It is worth noting that the EU is recently planning to construct new underwater cables, clearly aimed at reducing reliance on Russian regional infrastructure. This disruption occurs nearly a year after Google imposed comprehensive sanctions on Russia, and the attack targets countries around the Black Sea that Russia considers “hostile.”

Google has yet to provide any explanation for this matter. In the past, similar failures often occurred in the United States, and the main cause was usually power issues at data centers. However, this time is clearly different, as it seems to carry some sort of political message.

When digital infrastructure becomes a bargaining chip in geopolitical struggles, what can we ordinary users do besides waiting? This may be the sharpest question of the era of digital dependence.