On Friday afternoon, Google News stopped showing breaking news for a while, but only showed broken news.
If you picked up your phone around 3 o’clock on Friday afternoon, you probably noticed that not everything was working properly. If you swipe all the way to the left from the home screen, you will normally see the Google Discover screen there. This is usually full of articles that Google thinks you would find interesting, although that entire page was suddenly empty on Friday afternoon.
That Google Discover screen is only found on Android devices, but iOS users also experienced problems with Google, just like people who searched for news on their PC. There was a malfunction with Google News, which you can also access via the internet and the iOS app. Google Discover remained empty because it builds on Google News, but old articles were also suddenly no longer loaded.
Cause unknown for now
It is not known exactly what the cause of the problem was. It is certain that it occurred worldwide. The website downdetector.com shows that complaints are coming from several major American cities. The same picture also shows the United Kingdom and the European mainland.
It is difficult to determine how many people were affected by the outage, but it is not an exaggeration to say that several million people saw an upside-down ice cream cone.
About two hours after the Google services went off the air, there seemed to be no problem anymore. Both Google News and Google Discover are now working as they should again.