Google sparked panic on social media when it crashed on Wednesday around 9:20 p.m. PT.
Once people realized the outage had occurred, users of America’s most popular search engine quickly began complaining about the problems on websites that were still functioning, such as Twitter and Facebook.
“Dare I say Google is down. Is that a global emergency?” one distressed Twitter user wrote, while another asked: “Did Google die?”
The technical glitch, which also affected YouTube, came just hours after Google launched a new cell phone service called Project Fi, which offers the same basic functionality as traditional wireless carriers, such as voice, text and Internet access, at a lower price than many plans.
The service will cost $20 a month for talk and text with data charges on top of that.
There was no proof that the launch of Project Fi was connected to Wednesday’s outage, and not surprisingly, once the tech giant’s site was back up and running, information about the crash didn’t pop up on the search engine.
Read some of the distressed tweets below.
https://twitter.com/andylevy/status/591093521219719168
https://twitter.com/JasonHirschhorn/status/591096211077206016
Ok it came back. But now I forgot that I needed to google.
— Reina Scully (@ReinaScully) April 23, 2015
I'm going have to search on yahoo why Google isn't working
— Jon Aime ??? (@JohnnyAime) April 23, 2015
google and everything it owns is down right now. Half the internet is basically off. This is what monopoly's get you.
— Jon Aime ??? (@JohnnyAime) April 23, 2015
Did Google really go down?
— . (@headgeek666) April 23, 2015
Google's down. Taking my zombie apocalypse plan into effect. And reactivating vintage AOL account. Go go gadget AOL.
— Barbara Howlin (@babshowlin) April 23, 2015
Times like these where, when I can access http://t.co/osLnvGZfoH while Google doesn't even give me a fail page, where I count blessings
— . (@headgeek666) April 23, 2015
that time Google was down and I couldn't remember anything
— Ladyshark (@ladysharkweek) April 23, 2015
https://twitter.com/itslawicki/status/591114090166128641
Well I'd love to upload a video but Google/YouTube is broken. Woo!
— Sam Tabor (@samueltabor) April 23, 2015