Apple Bee Daily News

Massive Amazon Web Services Outage Shuts Down Major Websites Worldwide — Experts Warn of Global Internet Fragility

Spread the love

A widespread outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) — the cloud-computing backbone that powers much of the internet — took hundreds of major websites and apps offline for hours on Monday, exposing once again how dependent the global web has become on a few massive technology providers.

Widespread Internet Chaos




The disruption began around 3:00 a.m. Eastern Time, with reports quickly flooding in from users across the United States and United Kingdom. Popular services — including WhatsApp, Venmo, Coinbase, Hulu, Snapchat, Fortnite, McDonald’s, Ring, and even Amazon’s own retail site — experienced partial or complete outages.

Government websites such as the U.K. tax portal, and media platforms like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, were also hit.

By 5:27 a.m., Amazon reported that “most affected services” had recovered but acknowledged a “backlog of queued requests.” By the afternoon, however, users were still encountering sporadic disruptions.

According to Down Detector, there were more than 8 million outage reports by 9:45 a.m. — the majority originating from North America and Europe.

Root Cause: Internal System Failure

In a statement issued at 11:43 a.m., Amazon attributed the outage to an internal system malfunction that disrupted how AWS balanced traffic across its network in Northern Virginia, the location of its largest U.S. data center cluster — known as “us-east-1.”

While AWS did not release specific technical details, experts suggest that even a minor error in a critical data center can cascade globally.

“Cloud platforms operate like black boxes — we don’t know what goes wrong unless the company tells us,” said Harry Halpin, CEO of NymVPN, a virtual private network provider.

Halpin added that the outage drew concern from global users, including Ukrainian soldiers who rely on encrypted connections for battlefield communication. “Everyone treats dependence on a few U.S.-based providers as normal,” he said. “But it’s not normal — and it’s dangerous.”




Dependence on Big Tech: A Global Risk

Analysts say the outage underscores a long-standing concern: the internet’s structural fragility. A handful of companies — chiefly Amazon, Microsoft, and Google — host a large portion of global web traffic. When one falters, millions of users feel the impact.

“This event reminds us that our digital world rests on a few corporate shoulders,” said Amro Al-Said Ahmad, a computer science lecturer at Keele University. “Cloud computing makes daily operations seamless, but one bad update can cripple the system.”

The warning echoes last year’s CrowdStrike software malfunction, which triggered a global daylong outage after a single faulty update.

The Call for Digital Diversity

Advocates argue that Monday’s AWS outage highlights an urgent need to diversify cloud infrastructure to protect essential services such as journalism, finance, and government operations.

“The infrastructure underpinning democratic discourse and secure communications cannot rely on a handful of companies,” said Corinne Cath-Speth, head of digital at Article 19, a free-speech advocacy group.

Similarly, Alexandra Geese, a member of the European Parliament, called the outage “a stark reminder that Europe’s digital sovereignty is a matter of security and resilience,” urging for regional cloud independence under E.U. jurisdiction.

Financial and Business Implications

Despite the widespread disruption, Amazon’s stock price remained stable in premarket trading. AWS represents about 20% of Amazon’s revenue yet contributes roughly 60% of its operating profit, underlining its strategic importance.

Industry experts note that many smaller companies rely on AWS because of its scalability and cybersecurity expertise. “It’s not realistic to tell companies not to outsource to specialists,” said Rebecca Wright, a computer science professor at Barnard College.

However, Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of Catchpoint, observed a recent trend: as cloud costs rise, some businesses are reconsidering in-house infrastructure to regain control and reduce dependency.

A Warning for the Future

As governments, corporations, and media increasingly depend on a few centralized cloud systems, Monday’s AWS disruption serves as a wake-up call.

“Infrastructure fragility isn’t just a technical problem,” Halpin warned. “It’s a geopolitical risk.”




Would you like me to:



Fuad Altam

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *