Google Maps Suddenly Went Down & It's Hard To Admit How Lost We Are Without It
Anyone know how to use a compass?
Google Maps.
Where are you when we need you, Google Maps?
People around the world were feeling pretty lost on Friday because Google Maps went down around noon EST.
Several direction-related Google APIs (application programming interfaces) were dealing with outages on Friday afternoon, Google’s official status page showed. The outage started around 11:30 a.m., according to the website tracker Downdetector.
If you opened your Google Maps app, you probably found yourself somewhere between "blank" and "void."
Many people turned to social media to complain about the outage.
I am legitimately stunned that Google Maps is apparently down\n\nGood thing I know where I'm going, or I'd have to use Apple Maps and be like Magellan.\n#GoogleMapspic.twitter.com/LnofeVwwT7— Jordan Roca \uea00 (@Jordan Roca \uea00) 1647620631
Others just accepted that they'll be utterly lost for a little while.
Google Maps is down.\nMe:pic.twitter.com/RQbvJrhRc8— Emilio (@Emilio) 1647618286
Many others confessed that they were turning to (or at least considering) another option: Apple Maps.
In the past hour we have learned that our navigation preferences are as follows:\n1. Google Maps when it isn\u2019t broken\n2. Guess and check\n3. Loading up Google Maps to see if it\u2019s still broken\n4. Asking someone\n5. Apple Maps— Eric Skoglund (@Eric Skoglund) 1647621762
Others were forced to rely on their own sense of direction.
The online response was similar to ones we've seen in the past over Facebook, Instagram and Slack outages, which left millions of people without something they use every day.
It's pretty rare for Google Maps to be down for an extended period of time, so we're guessing that people won't be suddenly switching to Waze any time soon.
The service was already starting to come back online around 2:30 p.m., but the outage is still a reminder that we're all super reliant on our smartphones.
So maybe it's time to stash a paper map in your car.
I think knowing you may have to, at least temporarily, manage without, is probably the winning position. :) (Take a paper map! Use a thesaurus, have a break from social media or email. It'll be fiiiiiine :D )— TheBrickCastle (@TheBrickCastle) 1647627574
Or... maybe not?