Unprecedented Google Cloud Error Erases $125 Billion UniSuper Fund Data

The public cloud realm has recently caught the eye of many onlookers due to various issues, but Google's recent blunder might be too outrageous, raising doubts about the capabilities of public cloud providers.

The Australian University Retirement Fund (UniSuper), managing $125 billion in funds, encountered errors across all its services, including investors being unable to view their account balances and investment returns.

Upon investigation, the fund discovered that it hadn't been subjected to a cyber-attack; instead, the issue originated from Google Cloud. In simple terms, during a configuration process, Google Cloud inadvertently deleted UniSuper's private cloud account, leading to the deletion of all their data.

To ensure availability, UniSuper had backups on the Google Cloud platform. However, due to the account deletion issue, Google even deleted the backup data. Fortunately, the fund had another platform provider outside Google Cloud, where further backup data was stored.

Google stated that this was an isolated incident, assuring that data of all other customers running on Google Cloud platform remained unaffected. Google will take measures to prevent such incidents from happening again.

UniSuper operates hundreds of virtual machines, databases, and applications on the Google Cloud platform. Google is assisting UniSuper in recovering from backup data, including rebuilding virtual machines and databases.

Given the absurdity of this incident, Google is expected to dissect and disclose the details of the mishap after completing the data recovery process. At that time, we'll see what kind of unprecedented move allowed Google to delete a client's entire data set.