Google had to sort out a major headache yesterday, as millions of Google Home and Chromecast users were left without service. According to The Guardian, the outage lasted for more than 12 hours.

Google has not yet stated a reason for the outage, but did eventually provide a way to get devices up and running again. “We’ve identified a fix for the issue impacting Google Home users and it will be automatically rolled out over the next 6 hours. If you would like an immediate fix please follow the directions to reboot your device,” a statement from the company read.

The problem meant that Google Home owners were not provided with an appropriate response from their favourite talking speaker, instead it spouted the following: “There was a glitch, try again in a few seconds.” These seconds turned into hours before Google offered a solution. Obviously users were not pleased, taking to Twitter to voice their frustration.

Got up at 5am with my son this morning. Started by spending 30 mins to try and fix the issue. Thank you @Chromecast @madebygoogle https://t.co/f6oPtsLprV

— Jens Soegaard (@jenssog) June 27, 2018

It should be interesting to hear what caused the outage, and if something like this could happen in future. The fact that such a large majority of devices were affected is also discomforting. With these types of smart speakers quite new, one would hope that Google can learn from this mistake.