Google’s streaming service YouTube suffered a major outage on Wednesday morning as users complained that they were unable to access the website.
The service was back up as of 11 a.m. HK/SIN time (11 p.m. ET Tuesday), although YouTube did not explain what caused the outage.
Earlier, when users tried to access YouTube.com, they were greeted with a blank page that showed no videos. On the app, an error message read, “There was a problem with the network [503].”
More than an hour later, the company tweeted that they were back in business.
Thanks for your reports about YouTube, YouTube TV and YouTube Music access issues. We're working on resolving this and will let you know once fixed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and will keep you updated.
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 17, 2018
We're back! Thanks for all of your patience. If you continue to experience issues, please let us know. https://t.co/NVU5GP7Sy6
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 17, 2018
A map on DownDetector, which tracks status information and outages for various types of services in real time, showed that users in the United States, Brazil, Japan, parts of Australia, Southeast Asia and Western Europe were affected.
YouTube acknowledged the outage on Twitter and said it was working to fix the problem.
It is unusual for Google services to experience downtime but YouTube has experienced some problems in the past. During the 2018 FIFA World Cup, YouTube TV — a paid live streaming service — went down briefly during the match between Croatia and England.
