Google was recently linked to a wide internet outage that occurred in Japan.

Several people in Japan reported an internet disruption last Friday, which lasted around 40 minutes, preventing a significant population to access bank accounts and train reservation services, according to Gadgets360.

The outage affected NTT Communications networks, a global website and telecommunication service for individual and business users around the world.

The Register noted Google “leaked” a big route table to Verizon, which has been further described as a border gateway protocol (BGP) hack, distributing route information between networks, causing additional traffic.

A Google spokesperson said: “We set wrong information for the network and, as a result, problems occurred. We modified the information to the correct one within eight minutes. We apologise for causing inconvenience and anxieties.”

Japan Times reported the situation became so severe that the country’s internal affairs and communications directed internet service providers to report why the internet outage occurred.

Written by Leah Alger