Late on Thursday India time at around 9:30 PM, the most used navigation app, Google Maps crashed leaving all its users directionless. With most of the world using google maps to navigate, the problem with the app really threw the routine travel out of gear for people around the world.
The website Down Detector recorded a sharp spike in reports about Google Maps today evening as hundreds of thousands of people suddenly found themselves unable to access the map on the app.
Many of those that tried to access the Google Maps website were greeted by a message saying the ‘server encountered an error’, while several others were just greeted by a blank screen. The wait to see the map getting uploaded kept getting longer and longer as the app stayed down.
Some people got so frustrated that they even resorted to using the Apple Maps
Not Google maps abandoning me and making me have to redownload Apple Maps…. pic.twitter.com/OkCYK46oiN
— It’s Niffin (@JustMeLorrz) March 18, 2022
I am legitimately stunned that Google Maps is apparently down
— Jordan Roca (@JRoc23) March 18, 2022
Good thing I know where I’m going, or I’d have to use Apple Maps and be like Magellan.#GoogleMaps pic.twitter.com/LnofeVwwT7
At times like these, Indian attempt to build an alternative to Google Maps becomes all the more important. So that in future, one outage like this doesn’t throw the entire normal life out of gear.
