Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn moreDays after OpenAI and Google Cloud announced a partnership to support the growing use of generative AI platforms, much of the AI-powered web and tools went down due to an outage of the leading cloud providers.Google Cloud Service Platform (GCP) and some Cloudflare services began experiencing issues around 10:00 a.m. PT today, affecting several AI development tools and data storage services, including ChatGPT and Claude, as well as a variety of other AI platforms.We are aware of a service disruption to some Google Cloud services and we are working hard to get you back up and running ASAP.Please view our status dashboard for the latest updates: https://t.co/sT6UxoRK4R — Google Cloud (@googlecloud) June 12, 2025A GCP spokesperson confirmed the outage to VentureBeat, urging users to check its public status dashboard.GCP said affected services include API Gateway, Agent Assist, Cloud Data Fusion, Contact Center AI Platform, Google App Engine, Google BigQuery, Google Cloud Storage, Identity Platform, Speech-to-Text, Text-to-Speech and Vertex AI Search, among other tools. Google’s mobile development platform, Firebase, also went down.VentureBeat staffers had trouble accessing Google Meet, but other Google services on Workspace remained online.A Cloudflare spokesperson told VentureBeat only “a limited number of services at Cloudflare use Google Cloud and were impacted. We expect them to come back shortly

The US Justice Department (DOJ) is examining whether Alphabet’s Google violated antitrust regulations through a deal involving the AI technology of Character.AI, a well-known chatbot developer, Bloomberg reported. Regulators are assessing whether the tech giant crafted the agreement to avoid formal merger oversight, sources familiar with the investigation told the publication. In the arrangement made in 2024, Character.AI’s founders returned to Google, and the company obtained a non-exclusive license to utilise the startup’s technology. The raised concerns among regulators about large tech companies suppressing emerging competitors. Google is “always happy to answer any questions from regulators,” Peter Schottenfels, a company spokesperson in an emailed statement to the publication said. “We’re excited that talent from Character.AI has joined the company, but we have no ownership stake and they remain a separate company.” The Justice Department can investigate whether the deal itself undermines competition, even if it did not require formal review, the report said

The Department of Justice is reportedly probing whether a Google artificial intelligence (AI) deal violates antitrust law. At issue is Google’s agreement with chatbot maker Character.AI to use that company’s AI technology, Bloomberg News reported Thursday (May 22), citing sources familiar with the matter. According to those sources, regulators recently informed Google they are investigating whether the company designed that agreement to avoid government merger scrutiny