A significant number of Android users worldwide experienced unexpected crashes when using Google’s search engine app from late Saturday to early Sunday. The issue, acknowledged by the U.S. tech giant, caused frustration among users who rely on the app for quick and easy access to information.
According to reports, over 7,000 problem submissions were recorded on an outage tracking website. Many users took to social media platforms to share screenshots of the error message stating, “Google keeps stopping,” which appeared repeatedly on their devices.
In response to the widespread disruptions, the Google Search team updated their status dashboard, indicating that while the app’s stability is improving, they are “still working on a fix.” The service issue was reported to have begun around 11 p.m. Pacific Time (0600 GMT).
Google advised affected users to try clearing the cache and data for the Google app on their phones as a temporary solution. Other Google services and the Google Search functionality on non-Android platforms appeared to remain unaffected during this period.
For users needing immediate access to Google Search on their Android devices, an alternative is to use mobile browsers such as Chrome or Firefox and navigate directly to the web version of the search engine. This version was reportedly still operational as of 4 p.m. Beijing Time (0800 GMT) on Sunday.
Additionally, users can consider using other major search engines like Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Yandex, or DuckDuckGo to meet their information needs while Google resolves the app issues.
