Google Home and Chromecast are down for some users (update: fix)

'Tis the season for large-scale service outages, apparently. Google has confirmed that many Home speaker and Chromecast users around the world are unable to use their devices, even after a reboot. The company didn't say why, and didn't have an estimated time of repair as of this writing. However, the issue has been inconsistent -- my Home Mini could respond to commands, while TechCrunch colleagues received an error.

There are claims that the outage may have stemmed from an unsuccessful update, but there isn't any firm evidence of this at the moment. One thing's clear: this is bound to be frustrating if you rely heavily on Google's ecosystem to power your smart home.

Update: Google has a fix ready, and has promised to automatically deploy it within six hours (as of roughly 6PM Eastern). If you can't wait, Google recommends restarting your devices to bring them back online. The company also notes that the outage came from a problem with the backend systems that work with both Google Home and Chromecast.