Global Web Disruption as Amazon Web Services Suffers Major Outage

A widespread outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday disrupted major financial, consumer, and government platforms across the globe, highlighting the world’s dependence on the cloud giant that powers a significant portion of the internet.

Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud provider, said its cloud service had “recovered significantly” after the disruption, which began early Monday and degraded services for a range of customers, including AI companies, government agencies, and financial platforms.

AWS identified the cause of the disruption as “a problem with a regional gateway on the US East Coast,” but assured users that “most requests should now be succeeding,” according to a statement on its health dashboard released just over two hours after the first update.

User complaints began spiking just after 7:30 a.m. London time, according to data from Downdetector, with the ripple effects quickly spreading across sectors.

Financial platforms such as Coinbase and Robinhood reported that the AWS issue was affecting their financial services, while AI company Perplexity said the disruption had impacted the stability of its website. The UK football team Tottenham Hotspur informed fans that its e-ticketing platform was affected, and a spokesman for HMRC, Britain’s tax authority, said its website was down due to the AWS problem.

Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud service underpins about a third of the global cloud market, making any outage a potential global incident. Other major platforms, including Roblox, Fortnite, and corporate messaging service Slack, also saw a surge in user complaints that might be related to the AWS disruption, according to Downdetector.

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Amazon’s own services were not spared. Reports of issues with Alexa and the Ring home security system also rose during the outage period.

While most glitches on large-scale tech systems are typically resolved quickly, the incident once again underscores how tightly interconnected modern digital systems are. A single failure can cause chain reactions across industries a vulnerability highlighted last year when a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. grounded flights and crashed systems globally, resulting in billions of dollars in losses.