[Asia Economy Reporter Buaeri] Global video service YouTube experienced an error for about 2 hours on the 12th, causing inconvenience to users. YouTube is currently back to normal.
"Worldwide YouTube Outage Communication"
YouTube encountered errors such as videos not playing for about 2 hours starting around 9 a.m. that day. When accessing YouTube on PC and mobile, buffering occurred on videos or the screen did not display properly. Also, when clicking on a video, a black screen with the message 'An error has occurred' appeared.
Since YouTube holds a significant share in the domestic video market, many users experienced inconvenience due to the service disruption.
According to IGAWorks' 'Mobile Index,' YouTube's domestic monthly active users (MAU) in September reached 43.19 million, accounting for 83% of South Korea's population. It was found that 8 out of 10 people in the country watch videos on the YouTube app for nearly 30 hours per month.
Because of this, users expressed their inconvenience through social networking services (SNS) on that day. Keywords such as 'YouTube buffering,' 'YouTube not playing,' and 'YouTube loading' appeared in the real-time search terms on major portal sites.
The YouTube outage also caused inconvenience to companies planning to hold online seminars due to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19). Samsung SDS, which was scheduled to hold its annual developer conference 'Techtonic 2020' starting at 10 a.m. that day, faced difficulties in event operation due to the YouTube outage.
The YouTube service disruption occurred not only in South Korea but also in countries worldwide, including the United States and Japan. Foreign media such as The Verge and CNET also reported on the YouTube outage incident.
"Normalized after 2 hours"
Not only YouTube on PC and mobile but also the YouTube Music app experienced errors where music did not play that day. However, as YouTube returned to normal, most services were restored.
YouTube officially announced the service normalization through its official social networking service (SNS) account around 11 a.m. Korean time that day. This is not the first time YouTube has experienced such an outage. A similar disruption occurred in 2018, causing inconvenience to users. However, this time the damage was much greater. In the past two years, YouTube users have increased, and due to the impact of COVID-19, online seminars and other events were conducted through YouTube.
Regarding this, Google Korea stated, "Service errors have been resolved on all devices and YouTube services," and apologized for the inconvenience caused.
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