When word of McDonald’s tech woes got out, of course, it was all over social media. Rival Burger King even took the opportunity to troll its arch-nemesis once again, tweeting: “Not loving I.T.” Rumors were also rife, with one of the most widespread ones attributing the cyber failure to hackers. Some speculated that the hackers might be Russian — were they trying to cut off Donald Trump from his fast food favorites to undermine his third presidential campaign? — although one Twit wit facetiously attributed the outage to “health hackers.”
Company spokespeople, however, are adamant that the outage was not caused by a cybersecurity issue. Instead, McDonald’s says that the fault lies with a third-party provider that oversees its technology. While the chain has been using Google Cloud for its tech hosting since late 2023, it also refutes any claims that the switchover led to its recent tech problem, so we can’t say for sure whether this was a Google glitch or whether there’s a second third party involved.
