Amazon Web Services (AWS) said late Monday that it had restored service after a massive outage left thousands of websites and apps offline worldwide for most of the day.
Over 1,000 platforms — including Snapchat and banks such as Lloyds and Halifax — went offline due to technical failures in Amazon’s US-based cloud network. Downdetector, a global outage tracker, logged over 11 million reports during the disruption.
Experts said the incident highlighted the risks of concentrating critical digital infrastructure in the hands of a few major providers.
Single failure cuts access for millions
Professor Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey said the outage revealed the fragility of global internet systems. Many services depend on external infrastructure beyond 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 typical weekday total. That number later climbed 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 root issue.
Cascading failures amplify the crisis
Mike Chapple, an IT professor at Notre Dame University, compared the outage to a regional power grid failure. He said early restorations may have caused additional problems before engineers resolved the core fault. “It’s like restoring flickering lights without fixing the wiring,” he said.
Amazon has not 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, leaving users cut off entirely.
Dependence on cloud giants raises alarm
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said the outage highlighted the dangers of relying on a handful of 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 impact 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 risk.
Companies urged to strengthen resilience
Cornell University professor Ken Birman said firms relying on AWS share some responsibility. “Many organisations fail to build adequate backup systems for their applications,” he said. Outages occur often, though few reach this scale.
Birman added that the tools to build 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 move to 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 depends too heavily on a few tech giants — and whether one provider’s failure could again paralyse major parts of the digital economy.
