Google Cloud deletes Australian trading fund’s infra

2026-05-20 · Source: The Pragmatic Engineer · Field: Technology & Digital — Cloud Computing & IT Infrastructure · Depth: Intermediate, short

Summary

Google Cloud experienced a significant service outage on April 29, 2024, impacting UniSuper, a major Australian superannuation fund managing \$124B in assets for 615,000 citizens. The incident resulted from Google Cloud accidentally deleting UniSuper's entire subscription, which eradicated all associated data, including replicas across two Google Cloud regions. UniSuper's services remained offline for two weeks until May 15, but critical data loss was averted due to an independent third-party backup. Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian issued a joint statement taking full responsibility for the failure. This event, coupled with a separate incident on May 20, 2026, where Google Cloud blocked cloud infrastructure provider Railway's account, raises concerns about Google Cloud's reliability and strategy.

Key takeaway

For IT professionals and DevOps engineers managing critical data in the cloud, you must implement robust, independent backup strategies outside your primary cloud provider. Do not solely trust in-region or cross-region replication from a single vendor, as catastrophic data deletion can occur. This incident highlights the necessity of a "plan B" to mitigate the risk of significant downtime and reputational damage from unexpected cloud provider failures.

Key insights

Cloud providers can fail catastrophically; external backups are crucial for data integrity.

Principles

• Cloud regional replication is not foolproof.
• Diversify data backups beyond a single provider.
• Cloud provider reliability varies significantly.

In practice

• Implement third-party data backups for critical systems.
• Evaluate cloud provider reliability beyond marketing claims.
• Maintain a "plan B" for cloud account deletion/blocking.

Topics

• Google Cloud
• Data Loss
• Cloud Reliability
• Data Backup Strategy
• Disaster Recovery
• UniSuper Incident

Best for: CTO, Executive, Entrepreneur, DevOps Engineer, IT Professional, VP of Engineering/Data

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by The Pragmatic Engineer.