---
title: "Google Maps Is Down Worldwide [UPDATE: It’s Back Up]"
description: "Yes, Google Maps was down for everybody."
date: "2022-03-18"
modified: "2022-03-18"
authors:
  - name: "Caleb Jacobs"
    job_title: "Senior Editor"
    link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/caleb-jacobs"
url: "https://www.thedrive.com/news/44827/google-maps-is-down-worldwide"
categories:
  - "Car Tech"
  - "News"
---

# Google Maps Is Down Worldwide \[UPDATE: It’s Back Up\]

![](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/images-by-url-td/content/2022/03/Maps-Hero.jpg>)
*\<em\>www.thedrive.com</em>*

If you drove anywhere between 10:45 a.m. and 2 p.m. ET today, you might've noticed that [Google Maps](<https://www.thedrive.com/news/24124/google-maps-street-view-easter-egg-shows-the-stig-drift-the-top-gear-test-track>) was down. That's not great for a few reasons, chief among them being that the alternatives kinda suck. Apple Maps? C'mon. In all seriousness, though, it affected users worldwide.

According to [the Down Detector site](<https://downdetector.com/status/google-maps/>), initial reports came in around 11 o'clock Friday morning with tens of thousands piling on ever since. Some reported error messages saying "Maps can't reach the internet," while others were shown a blank, mapless world. And as minor as this seems, Google Maps is the most downloaded navigation app in the world—it's already pre-installed on Android phones, helping it past one billion monthly users, [Google claims](<https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/maps-platform/9-things-know-about-googles-maps-data-beyond-map>).

Twitter, of course, was lit up about it.

https://twitter.com/_/status/1504846281994379268

https://twitter.com/_/status/1504851487494713356

https://twitter.com/_/status/1504856469853851649

This was by far the largest outage Google Maps has experienced in a while. There's no indication of what happened exactly, and Google hasn't answered any requests for comment from media outlets thus far. Regardless, people had a hard time navigating from A to B without the service, whether it be on their phones or in their cars.

Plenty of automakers, from Tesla to Toyota and several others, use Google Maps for in-vehicle navigation. The temporary outage roped them in as well, leaving them without a visual map to go off of. One Tesla Model 3 driver claimed navigation still worked, but they couldn't see when a turn was coming.

https://twitter.com/_/status/1504881957271920644

Some users reported that the Waze app wasn't working right, either. Waze is owned by Google so it's possible that the two platforms suffered from the same problem. It wasn't as widespread with [Waze](<https://www.thedrive.com/news/19936/waze-makes-one-of-the-steepest-hills-in-america-a-traffic-disaster>), however, as [Down Detector showed just over 100 reports](<https://downdetector.com/status/waze/>) at the time of publishing.

It's possible that some fringe cases are still experiencing problems, though when I tried it on multiple Apple devices, it worked as normal.

**​*Updated at 2:05 p.m. ET on 03/18/2022:*** *This article has been edited reflect that Google Maps returned to service around 2 p.m. ET.**​​*

*Got a tip about Google Maps totally crashing? Send it to me: caleb@thedrive.com*

## Author
Caleb Jacobs is The Drive’s senior editor. When he’s not searching for stories or poring over copy, he’s usually driving his dump truck or wishing it was running so he could drive it. He was born and raised in the Missouri Ozarks, and he lives there today with his family.

### Author social links  
[LinkedIn](<https://www.linkedin.com/in/caleb-jacobs-319323119>)  
[Instagram](<https://instagram.com/calebjwords>)  
[Twitter](<https://twitter.com/calebjacobs0611>)