The internet experienced a major hiccup on Monday. Amazon Web Services (AWS), which powers a huge chunk of the internet’s most popular apps and websites, suffered a significant outage that left millions of users frustrated and unable to access their favorite platforms.
The disruption hit some of the biggest names in tech. Popular gaming platform Fortnite and social media favorite Snapchat were among the most notable casualties, with users worldwide suddenly finding themselves unable to log in or use these services. But the impact didn’t stop there, the outage triggered a domino effect, causing higher error rates and frustrating delays across multiple AWS services that countless companies rely on daily.
Financial platforms weren’t spared either. Major services like Coinbase and Robinhood, which handle cryptocurrency and stock trading, experienced significant problems. Perplexity, an AI-powered search platform, also faced disruptions. In the UK, users flooded Downdetector, a website that tracks service outages, with reports of connectivity issues across numerous platforms.
So what was AWS doing about it? The company quickly acknowledged the problem and assured users they were actively working on solutions to restore services as quickly as possible. Their technical teams scrambled to identify the root cause and implement fixes.
Interestingly, not everything went down. Social media platform X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, confirmed it remained fully operational throughout the disruption, likely because it doesn’t rely as heavily on AWS infrastructure.
The incident serves as a stark reminder of how dependent our digital world has become on a handful of cloud service providers.
