Amazon Web Services (AWS) said late Monday that it had restored service after a massive outage left thousands of websites and apps offline across the globe for most of the day.
More than 1,000 platforms — including Snapchat and banks such as Lloyds and Halifax — were affected by technical failures in Amazon’s US-based cloud network. Downdetector, a global outage tracker, recorded over 11 million reports during the disruption.
Experts said the incident highlighted the dangers of concentrating critical digital infrastructure in the hands of just a few major providers.
Millions affected by a single technical failure
Professor Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey said the outage revealed the fragility of the global internet. He explained that many services rely on external systems outside their control. “Even minor human errors can cause worldwide disruption,” he said.
The outage began around 07:00 BST on Monday, when users reported issues accessing platforms such as Fortnite and Duolingo.
By midday, Downdetector had logged over four million reports across 500 websites — double the usual weekday total. That number later rose above 11 million as additional platforms, including Reddit and Lloyds Bank, went offline.
By 23:00 BST, Amazon confirmed all AWS services had returned to normal after engineers throttled parts of the network to fix the underlying problem.
Cascading failures amplify the crisis
Mike Chapple, an IT professor at Notre Dame University, compared the outage to a regional power failure. He said partial restorations may have triggered further problems before engineers resolved the core fault. “It’s like restoring flickering lights without repairing the wiring,” he said.
Amazon has not yet provided a full explanation. In a brief update, the company said the issue appeared linked to DNS resolution in its DynamoDB API in the US-EAST-1 region.
DNS, or Domain Name System, acts as the internet’s directory, converting website names into numerical addresses computers can read. When DNS fails, browsers cannot locate websites, cutting users off entirely.
Heavy reliance on cloud giants sparks concern
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said the outage demonstrated the risks of relying on a few major cloud providers. “Everyone has a bad day, and today it was Amazon’s,” he said. “The cloud allows rapid growth, but a single failure can disrupt millions globally.”
Cori Crider, head of the Future of Technology Institute, compared the outage to “a bridge collapsing in the digital economy.” She said roughly 70% of cloud services worldwide depend on Amazon, Microsoft, and Google — a concentration she called “structurally risky.”
“When one major provider fails, entire sectors can grind to a halt,” Crider said. She urged governments and businesses to diversify cloud services and invest in local alternatives to reduce future risks.
Companies urged to strengthen digital resilience
Cornell University professor Ken Birman said firms relying on AWS share part of the responsibility. “Many organisations fail to build adequate backup systems for their applications,” he said. Outages occur frequently, though few reach this scale.
Birman added that the tools to create secure and resilient systems already exist. “We know how to prevent failures like this,” he said. “Yet many companies prioritise convenience over reliability.”
Legal and financial consequences loom
Questions of accountability could reach the courts. Following last year’s CrowdStrike outage, Delta Airlines is still seeking over $500 million in damages. The airline had to manually restart 40,000 servers, causing several days of flight delays.
The AWS outage has renewed global concern over whether the internet relies too heavily on a handful of tech giants — and whether one provider’s failure could again paralyse major parts of the digital economy.
