Incident Report

Summary

Starting 19 January at 10:10, Google Workspace customers may have experienced missing account metadata, including primary email address and account creation time in the Admin Console. Additionally, some customers experienced authentication failures for external services via Single Sign-On (SSO). The issue lasted for 1 day, 1 hour and 39 minutes. To our Workspace customers whose services were impacted during this disruption, we sincerely apologize. This is not the level of quality and reliability we strive to offer you, and we are taking immediate steps to improve the platform’s performance and availability.

Root Cause

This incident was caused by corrupted user account metadata in a secondary data store, triggered by a faulty code change. In Google's infrastructure, user account information is maintained in a primary backend system of record. This data is periodically synchronized to secondary data stores, which applications such as the Admin Console use to retrieve and display user profile information. The trigger for this incident was a faulty code change deployed to a synchronization job. This change caused the job to malfunction and write invalid or empty information into the secondary data store for a subset of user accounts. Although the correct user data remained intact in the primary backend system of record, the corrupted copy in the secondary data store was served to dependent services.

Remediation and Prevention

Google engineers were first alerted to the potential issue via a support case submitted on 20 January at 03:32. Upon receiving the alert, engineering teams initiated an investigation and quickly identified that a faulty code change, which had been recently deployed to a synchronization job, was the primary source of the data discrepancies. This specific job was responsible for updating secondary data stores from the primary backend account system. To resolve the incident, a multi-pronged remediation strategy was executed. A rollback of the application service was performed in parallel with a manual synchronization process to restore data for all affected users. This restoration relied on the primary backend account system, which remained accurate throughout the event. A specialized script was developed and run to correct the corrupted metadata for the impacted accounts. To ensure system stability during the recovery phase, the script was deployed in controlled batches. This systematic approach successfully mitigated the issue for all affected accounts and fully restored services by 20 January at 11:49.

Google is committed to preventing a recurrence of this issue and is implementing the following action items:

• Binary Release Controls: Automated release gates were established for the affected synchronization service to ensure stability and prevent a recurrence.
• Enhanced Release Validation: We are implementing stricter validation checks within the synchronization job to detect and block invalid metadata writes before they reach secondary stores.
• Monitoring and Alerting: We are expanding automated monitoring to detect data integrity discrepancies between our primary system of record and secondary data stores, allowing for faster detection.

Detailed Description of Impact

The service disruption occurred between 19 January at 10:10 and 20 January at 11:49, lasting a total of 1 day, 1 hour and 39 minutes. During this period, Google Workspace customers experienced significant issues with missing account metadata, specifically impacting the visibility and accuracy of user profiles.

• Admin Console Impact: Administrators searching for or viewing user details found that primary email addresses appeared as empty fields. Additionally, the account creation date for affected users was incorrectly displayed as "January 1, 1970". This data corruption also cascaded into other areas where user email addresses are typically populated, such as Reporting logs and Activity events, hindering administrative oversight and auditing.

• Directory API and Tooling: The issue extended beyond the web interface to programmatic access. Applications utilizing the Directory API, including critical tools like Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS), received incomplete responses. These API responses were missing vital fields, including primary emails and account creation metadata, potentially disrupting automated synchronization and provisioning workflows.

• Single Sign-On (SSO) Failures: A subset of customers experienced authentication failures for external services. These failures occurred when the external services relied on Google Workspace as the identity provider via SSO, as the required user identifiers were unavailable during the disruption.

Preliminary Incident Report

We apologize for the inconvenience this service disruption may have caused. We would like to provide some information about this incident below. Please note, this information is based on our best knowledge at the time of posting and is subject to change as our investigation continues. A final Incident Report with preventative actions will be posted once our investigation is complete. If you have experienced an impact outside of what is listed below, please reach out to Google Workspace Support using the help article https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213.

Date/Time of the Issue (All time US/Pacific)

Incident Start: 19 January 2026, 10:10

Incident End: 20 January 2026 11:49

Duration: 1 day, 1 hour, 39 minutes

Summary

Starting 19 January at 10:10, Google Workspace customers may have experienced missing account metadata, including primary email address and account creation time in the Admin Console for a duration of 1 day, 1 hour and 39 minutes. To our Workspace customers whose services were impacted during this disruption, we sincerely apologize. This is not the level of quality and reliability we strive to offer you, and we are taking immediate steps to improve the platform’s performance and availability.

Preliminary Root Cause

This incident was identified to be caused by corrupted user account metadata in a secondary data store, triggered by a faulty code change. In Google's infrastructure, user account information is maintained in a primary backend system of record. This data is periodically synchronized to secondary data stores, which applications such as the Admin Console use to retrieve and display user profile information. The trigger for this incident was a faulty code change deployed to a synchronization job. This change caused the job to malfunction and write invalid or empty information into the secondary data store for a subset of user accounts. Although the correct user data remained intact in the primary backend system of record, the corrupted copy in the secondary data store was served to dependent services. Google will complete a full Incident report in the following days that will provide a full root cause.

Remediation

Google engineers were alerted to the issue via support case on 20 January at 03:32. Engineering quickly identified a faulty code change that was deployed to a synchronization job as the source of the issue. A rollback of the application service was performed in parallel with synchronizing the data for affected users from the primary backend account system. A script was run to accomplish this, correcting the data for affected accounts. The script was deployed in batches, which led to the mitigation of the affected accounts and restored services on 20 January at 11:49.

Description of Impact

Between 19 January, 10:10 and 20 January, 11:49,

Admin Console: Administrators searching for or viewing users may have seen empty fields for primary email addresses and an incorrect account creation date of "January 1, 1970". The issue may have also affected the display of user information where a user's email address would normally be present (such as in Reporting or Activity events). Directory API: Applications accessing the Directory API, such as Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS), may have received responses with missing fields including email and account creation metadata. Single Sign-On (SSO): Some customers experienced SSO failures for external services that rely on Google Workspace as an identity provider.

Summary

Google Workspace customers may have experienced missing account metadata, including primary email address and account creation time in the Admin Console.

Description

The issue with Admin Console has been resolved for all affected users as of Tuesday, 2026-01-20 11:49 PST.

From preliminary analysis, the issue was due to a recent change to a job writing to the metadata store. Our engineers mitigated the issue by restoring the metadata from an unaffected source of truth.

We thank you for your patience while we worked on resolving the issue.

Diagnosis / Customer Symptoms

Admin Console: Administrators searching for or viewing users may have seen empty fields for primary email addresses and account creation dates. The issue may have also affected display of user information where a user's email address would normally be present (such as Reporting or Activity events). Directory API: Applications accessing the Directory API, such as Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS), may have received responses with missing email and account creation metadata.

Some customers saw Single Sign-On (SSO) failures due to this issue.

Workaround

The issue is resolved, no workaround necessary.

Summary

Google Workspace customers may be experiencing missing account metadata, including primary email address and account creation time in the Admin Console

Description

We believe the issue with Admin Console is mitigated for the vast majority of the users.

Engineering continues to work on full resolution and is expected to complete by Tuesday, 2026-01-20 09:15 PST.

We will provide an update by Tuesday, 2026-01-20 09:30 PST with current details.

Diagnosis / Customer Symptoms

Admin Console: Administrators searching for or viewing users may see empty fields for primary email addresses and account creation dates. The issue may also affect display of user information where a user's email address would normally be present (such as Reporting or Activity events). Directory API: Applications accessing the Directory API, such as Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS), may receive responses with missing email and account creation metadata.

Some customers may see Single Sign-On (SSO) failures due to this issue.

Workaround

None at this time.

Title: Google Workspace customers may be experiencing missing account metadata, including primary email address and account creation time in the Admin Console

Description: We believe the issue with Admin Console is partially resolved.

Full resolution is expected to complete by Tuesday, 2026-01-20 08:30 PST.

We will provide an update by Tuesday, 2026-01-20 08:45 PST with current details.

Symptoms:

• Admin Console: Administrators searching for or viewing users may see empty fields for primary email addresses and account creation dates. The issue may also affect display of user information where a user's email address would normally be present (such as Reporting or Activity events).
• Directory API: Applications accessing the Directory API, such as Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS), may receive responses with missing email and account creation metadata.

Workaround: None at the time.

Title: Google Workspace customers may be experiencing missing account metadata, including primary email address and account creation time in the Admin Console

Description: We are experiencing an issue with Admin Console beginning at Monday, 2026-01-19 10:10 PST.

Mitigation work is currently underway by our engineering team.

The mitigation is expected to complete by Tuesday, 2026-01-20 07:45 PST.

We will provide more information by Tuesday, 2026-01-20 08:00 PST.

We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption.

Symptoms:

• Admin Console: Administrators searching for or viewing users may see empty fields for primary email addresses and account creation dates. The issue may also affect display of user information where a user's email address would normally be present (such as Reporting or Activity events).
• Directory API: Applications accessing the Directory API, such as Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS), may receive responses with missing email and account creation metadata.

Workaround: None at the time.