Amazon cloud outage cripples major companies worldwide
A massive worldwide internet outage sent shockwaves through businesses and users across the globe Monday.
(NBC)- A massive worldwide internet outage sent shockwaves through businesses and users across the globe Monday, as Amazon Web Services (AWS) — the cloud-computing arm of the tech giant — went down, disrupting some of the world’s biggest companies.
From United Airlines to Apple, Slack, and Venmo, entire systems went dark for hours. The outage even hit Amazon’s own e-commerce site, government websites, and small businesses that rely on cloud-based services.
Social media quickly filled with posts from frustrated users:
“Canva is down — Adobe Express is also experiencing some problems,” one user wrote. Another asked, “What is going on with Snapchat? Why are my messages not being sent?”
Payment platforms were also affected, with one Venmo user sharing, “Money’s in there but Venmo is down!”
The impact rippled far beyond big tech. Small businesses like the True Grit Café in Ridgway, Colorado, were forced to revert to pen and paper. “We’re taking handwritten credit card information down and hope we don’t transpose the numbers,” said owner Tammee True Grit. When asked if it would affect sales, she replied, “Absolutely.”
Even government websites — including the U.S. Medicare portal and services in the U.K. — were temporarily inaccessible.
Cybersecurity expert Mike Chapple said the widespread failure underscores a growing risk in modern digital infrastructure. “When we put all of our eggs in a few very large baskets, we have the potential for something like today’s outage to happen,” he said.
Amazon confirmed that issues began overnight, when a technical error caused “increased error rates” across multiple AWS services. By early morning, the company claimed the problem had been “fully mitigated,” but by midday, customers were still reporting disruptions.
Experts say early evidence suggests the outage was not the result of a cyberattack, but rather a misconfiguration or internal system failure. “When the source is quickly discovered, it usually points to an accident rather than some type of attack,” Chapple explained.
The outage — one of the largest in recent years — has renewed calls for companies to diversify their digital infrastructure and reduce reliance on a single cloud provider.
