Cloud crash: AWS disruption ripples worldwide

Amazon announced on Monday that its systems are largely back online following a major outage caused by technical issues within its cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), CNN reported. While the company stated that the problem had been "fully mitigated," users continued to experience residual delays across several services.

The disruption, which began overnight, temporarily brought down numerous high-profile websites, apps, and essential digital platforms worldwide. Social media apps like Snapchat and Facebook, gaming platforms such as Fortnite and Roblox, streaming services including Disney+ and Hulu, and key businesses like Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and McDonald’s experienced service failures. Financial institutions and crypto platforms, including Coinbase, also reported interruptions. Additionally, AI firm Perplexity and smart home devices connected through Amazon’s ecosystem were affected.

AWS confirmed at 1:26 am ET (10:56 am IST) that it was experiencing "significant error rates for requests." The issue was later traced to a fault in the Domain Name System (DNS), which acts as the internet's address directory by converting user-friendly web domains into numerical IP addresses understood by servers. While data remained secure, many applications were effectively disconnected from their back-end systems. DNS is critical for connectivity, and when it fails, even servers that are fully operational cannot communicate with users.

By 6:35 am ET (4:05 pm IST), Amazon confirmed the DNS problem had been resolved. The company advised businesses to clear caches, the temporary storage used to speed up operations, to fully restore services. AWS continued monitoring other critical services, including EC2, its virtual server platform that powers numerous business applications. During the outage, AWS provided updates via its official Service Health Dashboard and pursued “multiple parallel paths” to accelerate recovery. Companies like Coinbase and Perplexity AI reassured users that customer data and funds remained safe throughout the disruption.

The outage affected a broad spectrum of industries:

• Social Media & Communication: Snapchat, Facebook

• Gaming: Fortnite, Roblox

• Streaming: Disney+, Hulu

• Airlines & Travel: Delta, United Airlines

• Food & Retail: McDonald’s

• Finance & Crypto: Coinbase

• AI & Smart Devices: Perplexity AI and Amazon-connected devices

Essentially, any service relying heavily on AWS infrastructure faced downtime, demonstrating the scale of dependence on cloud providers.

Financial and operational impact :

While Amazon has not released an official financial estimate, industry experts suggest that the temporary shutdown could have cost hundreds of billions of dollars globally, factoring in lost transactions, disrupted flights, halted streaming services, and operational delays across affected businesses. The true impact is compounded by reputational damage and customer trust concerns for companies dependent on AWS.

Implications for the future of the internet :

This outage underscores the centralization risk in the modern internet, where a failure at a single provider can ripple across global services. Technology analyst Lance Ulanoff emphasized that modern digital life from entertainment to finance depends on uninterrupted cloud infrastructure. Experts predict that incidents like this will push businesses toward:

• Multi-cloud strategies to reduce dependence on a single provider

• Redundant DNS and backup systems to ensure connectivity

• Stronger monitoring and disaster recovery protocols

Ultimately, the event highlights that while cloud computing has enabled unprecedented digital growth, it also makes the global internet ecosystem vulnerable to single points of failure.

AWS, originally developed to manage Amazon's own server capacity during high-traffic periods, has grown into one of the world’s largest cloud computing platforms, serving governments, banks, media companies, startups, and multinational corporations alike. The company is expected to release a comprehensive postmortem report in the coming days, detailing lessons learned and measures to prevent future outages.