Last week, nearly half of Japan briefly lost access to the internet because of an error made by Google. The mistake was noticed and corrected within just a few minutes, but its effects led to hours of slowed internet connections.
The problem occurred on Friday, when IP addresses belonged to Japanese internet service providers where routed to Google. So a large amount of traffic that was meant for Japan was suddenly sent towards Google by major internet service providers like Verizon. But Google isn't a service provider and isn't meant to route traffic, so all of that traffic destined for Japan was basically just sent nowhere.
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Connectivity was restored within the hour, but there was still slow connection speeds that resulted from in the mistake affected industries like finance, where online trading was halted, and transportation -- East Japan Railway Co. riders weren't able to buy tickets or board trains.