Major Internet Disruption as Amazon Web Services Outage Knocks Popular Platforms Offline Worldwide
A large-scale outage in Amazon Web Services (AWS) disrupted major internet services on Monday, temporarily knocking offline streaming platforms, messaging apps, online banking systems, and gaming networks across various regions. The incident once again underscored how deeply global digital infrastructure depends on a handful of tech giants.
The outage affected a wide range of platforms, including Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Perplexity AI, Fortnite, Airbnb, Snapchat, and Duolingo. Messaging services such as Signal and WhatsApp were also reported to be down in parts of Europe, while some users had trouble accessing Amazon’s own e-commerce website.
Banking services were also hit, with institutions such as Lloyd’s confirming disruptions tied to AWS. According to the internet monitoring site Downdetector, more than 11 million reports of AWS-related failures were logged over the course of the day.
Amazon said the initial issue was traced to a failure involving the Domain Name System (DNS), which functions as the web’s address book. The DNS malfunction also triggered cascading problems with its Network Load Balancer, affecting how data traffic was routed across the cloud.
AWS engineers eventually restored systems to “pre-event levels,” although the company acknowledged that normal operations would take hours as it worked through a significant backlog of stalled data requests.
The outage began early Monday and continued to impact certain services 18 hours later, even after the core issue was resolved. Amazon temporarily throttled operations in some regions to stabilize the network while recovery was underway.
AWS currently controls nearly one-third of the world’s cloud infrastructure market, providing backbone services to millions of applications, corporate networks, and government platforms. Analysts say the incident highlights the risks of over-reliance on a small number of cloud providers.
Financial analyst Michael Hewson compared the dependence on AWS and its competitors to “putting all your economic eggs in one basket,” warning that even short-lived outages can cause widespread ripple effects across industries.
Market observers also noted that as more governments and private firms migrate to cloud ecosystems, the impact of future outages could become even larger. A similar event took place in July 2024, when a faulty CrowdStrike update crashed millions of devices worldwide, shutting down airports, hospitals, and corporate systems.
Cybersecurity experts say Monday’s AWS failure is a reminder that cloud stability has effectively become a matter of public infrastructure — and that redundancies will be critical as workloads continue to scale globally.
