Josh Hendrickson
Right now, with much of the world staying at home, your services might fail you. If you’re a Nest user, you may be experiencing that fact first-hand. Nest Camera feeds are down for some users, while others are experiencing sluggishness. The outage began just a few minutes ago, and it’s unclear how many people are affected.
Update, 4/8/20: Google acknowledged the issue in a tweet, and says it is investigating. The updated Nest Status page reveals the partial outage is confined to live camera feeds and video history.
We're aware of an issue affecting some Google Nest devices and are currently investigating.
— Google Nest Support (@googlenesthelp) April 8, 2020
Update x2, 4/8/20: Google says it resolved the issue, and everyone’s Nest devices should be working now. The company says the problem stemmed from an issue with Google’s infrastructure components, specifically related to Google Cloud services. Our cameras appear to be working as of the latest update.
Update: We've resolved the issue with Google Nest devices and they should now work as expected. If not, please contact our support team so we can help. We appreciate your patience as we worked through this issue.
— Google Nest Support (@googlenesthelp) April 8, 2020
The original report is left intact below.
Multiple staff members at Review Geek, including myself, can’t get to their camera feeds right now. In one case, one camera worked, but it took a while to load, and another camera refused to load. Oddly, another RG staff member isn’t seeing any issues.
But we’re not alone; Twitter is already lighting up with reports that Nest is down for users.
@googlenesthelp all Nest camera's are down. Any updates?
— DDT0 (@danfrangione) April 8, 2020
And the Down Detector service issued a notice as well. According to Down Detector, the outage started at 10:41 A.M. EDT. Nest’s status page still lists all services as “OK,” so the company doesn’t seem to have noticed the issue yet.
Nest is having issues since 10:41 AM EDT. https://t.co/mFkTpBR2fL RT if it's down for you as well #Nestdown
— Downdetector (@downdetector) April 8, 2020
Unfortunately, as more and more people are staying home during the current COVID-19 pandemic, outages like this can and will happen. The internet is seeing far traffic than it has in previous months and years, and even the largest companies, like Google, are struggling to keep up. This latest outage is only days after the last issue with Nest products. Thankfully, that instance was solved in the same day so hopefully, Google can manage the same timely response again.
Update: We've resolved the issue with Google Nest devices and they should now work as expected. If not, please contact our support team so we can help.
— Google Nest Support (@googlenesthelp) March 28, 2020
For its part, Google has taken steps to help the load, like downgrading your YouTube streams to 720p. But you can expect to see additional outages as time goes on, and if you depend on an online service for your daily work or life, it would be wise to have a backup.
We’ll update this post as we learn more and when the problem is solved.
