Amazon Web Services (AWS) said late Monday that it had resolved a widespread outage that left thousands of websites and apps offline worldwide for much of the day.
More than 1,000 platforms — including Snapchat and banks such as Lloyds and Halifax — went down due to technical failures in Amazon’s US-based cloud network. Downdetector, a global outage monitor, recorded over 11 million reports of service disruptions during the incident.
Experts said the event exposed the risks of concentrating essential digital infrastructure in the hands of a few major providers.
Millions cut off by a single system failure
Professor Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey said the outage highlighted the fragility of global internet systems. Many services rely on infrastructure outside their control. “Even minor human errors can trigger widespread disruption,” he said.
The outage began around 07:00 BST on Monday, as users reported problems accessing platforms like Fortnite and Duolingo.
By midday, Downdetector had logged over four million reports across 500 websites — double the typical weekday total. The number later climbed above 11 million as more platforms, including Reddit and Lloyds Bank, went offline.
By 23:00 BST, Amazon confirmed all AWS systems had returned to normal after engineers throttled parts of the network to address the underlying issue.
Cascading failures worsen the impact
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 new issues before engineers resolved the root problem. “It’s like restoring flickering lights without repairing the wiring,” he said.
Amazon has not yet given 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 it fails, browsers cannot locate websites, leaving users cut off entirely.
Dependence on cloud giants raises alarm
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said the outage underscored the risks of relying on a few dominant cloud providers. “Everyone has a bad day, and today it was Amazon’s,” he said. “The cloud enables rapid growth, but one 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 around 70% of global cloud services depend on Amazon, Microsoft, and Google — a concentration she called “structurally risky.”
“When a 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 digital defences
Cornell University professor Ken Birman said companies relying on AWS share part of the responsibility. “Many organisations fail to build adequate backup systems for their applications,” he said. Outages happen frequently, though few reach this scale.
Birman added that the tools to create resilient and secure systems already exist. “We know how to prevent failures like this,” he said. “Yet many companies prioritise convenience over reliability.”
Legal and economic fallout expected
The question of accountability could move to the courts. After 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 a single provider’s failure could again paralyse large parts of the digital economy.
