Google search encountered disruptions for users in India and around the world on Wednesday evening, leaving many internet users baffled. Reports of issues began surfacing around 8:20 PM IST, with limited reports concentrated in India.
According to DownDetector, a website that tracks online service outages, over 1,300 reports of Google search malfunctioning emerged globally. In India, the figure stood at around 100 reports at the time of writing.
The DownDetector outage map indicated issues in major Indian cities like Delhi, Lucknow, Kolkata, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai. The reported problems primarily affected the Google website (over 96% of user reports), with a smaller percentage (around 4%) experiencing difficulties with search functionality.
Social media platform X (previously known as Twitter) buzzed with activity as hundreds of users in India reported the outage. The incident also sparked a wave of memes on X, with users resorting to humor as the search giant faced technical difficulties.