Google server trouble snarls YouTube, Snapchat

Congested Google servers in the eastern United States caused problems for users of Snapchat and YouTube on Sunday, with complaints on social media that the popular apps weren't accessible.

Google acknowledged the issue in a statement on its Cloud Platform status page that it was dealing with "high levels of network congestion in the eastern USA, affecting multiple services in Google Cloud, G Suite and YouTube."

"Users may see slow performance or intermittent errors," it said, adding that engineers had completed the first of two steps to restore normal operations.

Earlier in the day, social media users complained of trouble loading a slew of popular websites and apps.

"Google, YouTube, Snapchat, Shopify, all currently down. Is the internet melting?" asked one Twitter post.

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Snapchat and Google-owned YouTube both acknowledged the server issue on their Twitter accounts.

Cloud computing is one of Google's most lucrative services, but faces stiff competition from other technology companies like Amazon and Microsoft.

In March, the world's largest social network, Facebook, blamed a "server configuration change" for a massive outage affecting its applications around the world.

The outage affected users for at least 12 hours in most areas of the world, with the biggest impact in North America and Europe, a tracking website said at the time.

Also, the company has recently updated its Play Store policies, and stated that it will be imposing a ban on all apps that facilitate the sale of the drug in the US. This also includes apps that may not directly sell marijuana, but facilitate the sale in some manner or offer an option to arrange marijuana delivery for customers.

Under the new policy, the US-based internet giant explicitly stated that “allowing users to order marijuana through an in-app shopping cart feature,” will be considered as a violation of their rules.

Google’s anti-marijuana move, incidentally, follows in the footsteps of Apple, which prohibited apps on the App Store from “facilitating the sale of marijuana, tobacco, or controlled substances”.

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