Is Google Drive down? › Outage history › Aug 18, 2026

Google Drive partial outage on Aug 18, 2026: what happened

On Aug 18, 2026, the Google Workspace status dashboard reported "Some customers may experience slowness while using Google Drive.". About 12 hours 42 min: from Aug 18, 2026, 23:58 UTC to Aug 19, 2026, 12:40 UTC, by the official start and resolution times.

Google Drive right now

At our last refresh (Oct 22, 2026, 12:35 UTC) Google Drive was up: No open Google Drive incidents on Google's status dashboard.

Is Google Drive down right now? →
Started
Aug 18, 2026, 23:58 UTC
Resolved
Aug 19, 2026, 12:40 UTC
Duration
12 hours 42 min
Official impact
Service disruption
Affected
Google Drive
Source
Some customers may experience slowness while using Google Drive. on the Google Workspace status dashboard

The Google Workspace status dashboard rated the impact "Service disruption": a partial outage. Some parts or some users were affected; it was not a complete outage.

What caused the Google Drive partial outage?

"Google utilizes a multi-tiered global load balancing and network routing architecture to serve traffic efficiently. To ensure fair use and prevent congestion, bandwidth allocation is managed by attributing traffic to specific downstream services."

From the Google Workspace status dashboard, incident report, Aug 24, 2026, 16:31 UTC.

When was it fixed?

The Google Workspace status dashboard marked it resolved at Aug 19, 2026, 12:40 UTC, 12 hours 42 min after it started.

Timeline of official updates

Every update the Google Workspace status dashboard posted, oldest first. Times are UTC.

  1. Aug 19, 2026, 03:57 UTC service information

    Summary Some customers may experience slowness while using Google Drive. Description We are experiencing an issue with Google Drive beginning Tuesday, 2026-08-18 16:58 PDT. Our engineering team is currently working on a potential fix while continuing to investigate the full root cause. We will provide an update by Tuesday, 2026-08-18 22:00 PDT with current details. We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption. Symptoms Affected customers may experience slowness while using Google Drive. Workaround None at this time.

  2. Aug 19, 2026, 04:59 UTC service information

    Summary Multiple customers in Australia and New Zealand may experience slowness or errors while using Google Drive. Description We are experiencing an issue with Google Drive beginning Tuesday, 2026-08-18 16:58 PDT. Our engineering team is currently working on a potential fix while continuing to investigate the full root cause. We will provide an update by Wednesday, 2026-08-19 00:30 PDT with current details. Symptoms Affected customers in Australia and New Zealand may experience slowness or errors while using Google Drive. Some customers also may observe 502 errors with Drive inaccessible for a brief period. Workaround None at this time.

  3. Aug 19, 2026, 06:49 UTC service disruption

    Summary Multiple customers in Australia and New Zealand may experience slowness or errors while accessing Google Drive. Description We are experiencing an issue with Google Drive beginning Tuesday, 2026-08-18 16:58 PDT. Our engineering team has identified the root cause of the issue and is actively working on a mitigation strategy. There is no ETA for full resolution. We will provide an update by Wednesday, 2026-08-19 01:30 PDT with current details. Symptoms Affected customers in Australia and New Zealand may experience slowness or 502 errors, with some users briefly unable to access Drive. Workaround None at this time.

  4. Aug 19, 2026, 07:59 UTC service disruption

    Summary Multiple customers in Australia and New Zealand may experience slowness or errors while accessing Google Drive. Description We are experiencing an issue with Google Drive beginning Tuesday, 2026-08-18 16:58 PDT. Our engineering team has identified the root cause of the issue and is actively working on a mitigation strategy. There is no ETA for full resolution. We will provide an update by Wednesday, 2026-08-19 02:00 PDT with current details. Symptoms Affected customers in Australia and New Zealand may experience slowness or 502 errors, with some users briefly unable to access Drive. Workaround None at this time.

  5. Aug 19, 2026, 08:54 UTC service disruption

    Summary Multiple customers in Australia and New Zealand may experience slowness or errors while accessing Google Drive. Description We are experiencing an issue with Google Drive beginning Tuesday, 2026-08-18 16:58 PDT. Our engineering team is actively working on a mitigation strategy. There is no ETA for full resolution. We will provide an update by Wednesday, 2026-08-19 03:00 PDT with current details. Symptoms Affected customers in Australia and New Zealand may experience slowness or 502 errors, with some users briefly unable to access Drive. Workaround None at this time.

  6. Aug 19, 2026, 09:54 UTC service disruption

    Summary Multiple customers in Australia and New Zealand may experience slowness or errors while accessing Google Drive. Description We are experiencing an issue with Google Drive beginning Tuesday, 2026-08-18 16:58 PDT. Our engineering team is actively working on a mitigation strategy. There is no ETA for full resolution. We will provide an update by Wednesday, 2026-08-19 04:30 PDT with current details. Symptoms Affected customers in Australia and New Zealand may experience slowness or 502 errors, with some users briefly unable to access Drive. Workaround None at this time.

  7. Aug 19, 2026, 11:26 UTC service disruption

    Summary Multiple customers in Australia and New Zealand may experience slowness or errors while accessing Google Drive. Description We are experiencing an issue with Google Drive beginning Tuesday, 2026-08-18 16:58 PDT. Our engineering team is actively working on a mitigation strategy. There is no ETA for full resolution. We will provide an update by Wednesday, 2026-08-19 06:00 PDT with current details. Symptoms Affected customers in Australia and New Zealand may experience slowness or 502 errors, with some users briefly unable to access Drive. Workaround None at this time.

  8. Aug 19, 2026, 13:05 UTC service disruption

    Summary Multiple customers in Australia and New Zealand may have experienced slowness or errors while accessing Google Drive. Description The issue with Google Drive has been resolved for all affected customers as of Wednesday, 2026-08-19 05:40 PDT. Our engineering teams determined the slowness was the result of a localized capacity and routing issue within our regional infrastructure. To restore service, we implemented a fix to alleviate the network congestion and accelerated a planned infrastructure upgrade in the affected region to ensure normal performance levels. We thank you for your patience while we worked on resolving the issue. Symptoms Affected customers in Australia and New Zealand may have experienced slowness or 502 errors, with some users briefly unable to access Drive. Workaround The issue is now mitigated

The official incident report

Published Aug 24, 2026, 16:31 UTC. The opening of the report; the full text is on the official page.

Incident Report Summary On Tuesday, 18 August 2026 at 16:58 US/Pacific, an incident affecting Google Drive occurred for a duration of 12 hours and 42 minutes. Customers located in Australia, Philippines and New Zealand experienced severe latency, sporadic loading failures, and errors when accessing Google Drive. To our valued Google Workspace customers, we are deeply sorry for the service interruption you experienced. We are taking immediate and decisive action to address the issue and strengthen our systems against future incidents. Other Google Workspace services were not affected. Root Cause Google utilizes a multi-tiered global load balancing and network routing architecture to serve traffic efficiently. To ensure fair use and prevent congestion, bandwidth allocation is managed by attributing traffic to specific downstream services. A misconfiguration in the attribution of traffic caused the bandwidth usage to be incorrectly attributed to the frontend network load balancing tier itself, rather than to the Drive service. The sequence of events leading to customer impact was as follows: * Traffic from the regional load balancing tier was incorrectly attributed to the load balancing infrastructure rather than the Drive service. * Unrelated traffic caused network bandwidth usage attributed to the load balancing infrastructure in this region to exceed its quota. * Network bandwidth management systems applied throttling to this traffic to enforce quotas, causing severe network congestion affecting Drive traffic in this region. * This congestion led to increased latency, slowness, and error rates for users accessing Drive in the affected regions. Remediation and Prevention Google engineers were alerted to the issue via automated monitoring and an influx of customer ...

Read the full report on the Google Workspace status dashboard

Google Drive partial outage questions

What caused the Google Drive partial outage on Aug 18, 2026?

In its incident report (Aug 24, 2026, 16:31 UTC), the Google Workspace status dashboard said: "Google utilizes a multi-tiered global load balancing and network routing architecture to serve traffic efficiently. To ensure fair use and prevent congestion, bandwidth allocation is managed by attributing traffic to specific downstream services."

When was the Google Drive partial outage on Aug 18, 2026 fixed?

The Google Workspace status dashboard marked it resolved at Aug 19, 2026, 12:40 UTC, 12 hours 42 min after it started.

How long did the Google Drive partial outage last?

About 12 hours 42 min: from Aug 18, 2026, 23:58 UTC to Aug 19, 2026, 12:40 UTC, by the official start and resolution times.

Was Google Drive completely down?

No. The Google Workspace status dashboard rated the impact "Service disruption": a partial outage. Some parts or some users were affected; it was not a complete outage. The affected parts listed were: Google Drive.

Which parts of Google Drive were affected?

The Google Workspace status dashboard listed: Google Drive.

Other recent Google Drive incidents

Full Google Drive outage history and biggest outages → · Recent outages across all services →

Quotes are the Google Workspace status dashboard's own words, from the official incident. Is It Up or Down is independent and not affiliated with Google Drive. Times are UTC.