Three electricians working at a Google data center in Iowa were “critically injured” after an electrical explosion occurred at 11:59 am local time Monday. SFGATE was informed by the company.
We are aware of an electrical incident that took place today at Google’s data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, injuring three people onsite who are now being treated. We are committed to the safety and health of workers and will work closely with local authorities and partners to investigate and offer assistance as necessary.
The incident resulted in all three workers being conscious and breathing. The helicopter took one worker to the hospital, and two others were taken by ambulance.
Google is the world’s most popular search engine by far with an estimated 86 percent of the market share, and its parent company Alphabet is one of the biggest tech giants with a market cap of over $1.5 trillion. Social media sites and news websites reported widespread outages. People also claimed that they had problems using Gmail, as well as other Google services. Gmail and search engines are working well for me at the moment, however Downdetector.com says that there are many other users experiencing problems Monday evening. (Oops! Just after writing that last sentence, I tried to Google “something” and received an error message. We’ll see what happens as things develop.)
JUST IN: Google Search has major outages in place for over 40 million users from all 50 countries. pic.twitter.com/B5GxUIVTHw
— CryptoWhale (@CryptoWhale) August 9, 2022
Many funny Twitter memes show people panicking about not being able to find the search engine. However, since three people were seriously injured, I’m not going to print them here.
SFGATE explains why data centers are so important:
Google has 14 data centers in the United States, and 23 in total around the world. The data centers “keep all of Google’s products and services up and running around the clock,” according to the company. Council Bluffs [Iowa] location site is one of Google’s largest.
While there was no injury and everyone is fine, we are reminded of how much our dependence on the internet in this modern age. Pull the plug and we’re all in loads of trouble.
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