Before Spanner, one of the major problems that Google encountered with respect to consistency among databases was that of keeping time without constant, intense communication.

Before Spanner, Google faced challenges in maintaining consistency across its distributed databases due to the difficulty of synchronizing time without requiring constant, high-frequency communication between servers. Spanner addressed this by introducing TrueTime, which provides globally synchronized time within a certain error margin, allowing for more efficient consistency without the need for intense communication.