Did you face issues while trying to load a YouTube video? Well, many ran into the problem of YouTube playback being down. The error occurred with widespread subjective news and a quick rise in reports in DownDetector. But, worry now, the problem has already been fixed, and YouTube is officially back again!
During the entire stoppage, the Google Cloud status dashboard and the G Suite Status both reported green. However, one could see widespread reports of problems in a quick search on Facebook or Twitter.
The general reports of DownDetectors are not very precise, though. They are usually vague and could be unreliable in the case of an outage happening somewhere. The reports could be covering up other services that may not have been bothered, for instance, the ISPs. This stoppage could also have affected other areas like Play Store, but more of the organic reports showed results, including YouTube and its associates – YouTube TV and YouTube Music.
From the reports, we could tell that the scene was prevalent all over and did not specify any particular zone. Also, YouTube’s browser and a search did run on several platforms. Nonetheless, video playback was not loading or showed error.
Observing the reports, we noticed other non-Google services were also interrupted. This included regional power and some smart devices.
Moreover, Team YouTube accepted this error and admitted to working on it. So in order to trace out the progress of this issue, a YouTube Help forum post was posted. Also, with a request for comment, a Google spokesperson took us to the following tweet.
If you’re having trouble watching videos on YouTube right now, you’re not alone – our team is aware of the issue and working on a fix. We’ll follow up here with any updates.
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) November 12, 2020
YouTube TV has also been impacted by this issue. Follow @TeamYouTube for more updates. https://t.co/2ha0vucnmB
— YouTube TV (@YouTubeTV) November 12, 2020
Towards the end of the interruption, YouTube showed an error message which stated, “An error occurred (Playback ID: [a unique alphanumeric string goes here]) Tap to retry).” Since this statement from YouTube is fairly abstract, the concerned ones still need to figure out the ground reality of the matter. Following that, there was a huge number of complaints on social media as the outage happened during the “peak” viewing hours in the US.
Google has had a rough year. In March this year, Google faced a more serious widespread outage that interrupted different services – Gmail, Drive, and Nest. Likewise, a similar problem occurred in September. Besides, a relatively minor outage bothered Drive during September, and two more Nest outages happened in March and April.
YouTube is Back Online!
Well, YouTube is back again! At around 8:39 PM ET, YouTube came as new as a brand again, and at 9:13 PM, ET @TeamYouTube tweeted the recovery of the problem across all devices.
…And we’re back – we’re so sorry for the interruption. This is fixed across all devices & YouTube services, thanks for being patient with us ❤️ https://t.co/1s0qbxQqc6
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) November 12, 2020
However, neither YouTube nor Google has given any official explanation regarding the real cause of the outage until now. Still, we are expecting to hear the reports from the after-outage examination soon.
