Amazon has restored its cloud computing systems following a massive global outage that disrupted access to several major online platforms, including Snapchat, Lloyds Bank, Halifax, and Reddit. The disruption, which lasted for much of Monday, highlighted the world’s growing dependence on a handful of major technology providers to power essential online infrastructure.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud arm, confirmed that by late evening all affected systems had “returned to normal operations” after hours of technical issues traced to its U.S.-based data centers. “We have resolved the issue affecting the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1 and services are now stable,” the company said in a statement at around 23:00 BST.
The incident, which began around 07:00 BST, caused major service interruptions across thousands of websites and apps, ranging from online games like Fortnite to the language-learning platform Duolingo.
According to Downdetector, a global outage monitoring platform, user reports of access issues spiked dramatically — surpassing 11 million worldwide. The figure represents one of the largest single-day service disruptions recorded in recent years.
A Widespread Digital Disruption
The outage triggered widespread frustration among users and businesses alike. Many customers of banks such as Lloyds and Halifax reported being unable to access online banking services, while social media users were locked out of platforms like Snapchat for hours.
Mike Chapple, a professor of information technology at the University of Notre Dame, compared Amazon’s restoration efforts to a power grid recovery. “It’s like when you have a large-scale power outage. Crews start working to bring it back online, but the power might flicker a few times,” he explained. “Amazon may have initially addressed only the symptoms rather than the root cause.”
AWS later clarified that the problem stemmed from issues with DNS (Domain Name System) resolution linked to its DynamoDB database service. DNS is a fundamental internet process that converts web addresses into numeric codes used by computers to locate and load sites.
Experts Warn of Overdependence on Cloud Giants
Technology analysts and academics say the episode underscores the fragility of modern digital systems and the dangers of overreliance on a few dominant cloud providers.
Professor Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey told the BBC that the outage was a stark reminder of the internet’s interdependence. “So many online services rely upon third parties for their physical infrastructure. Even the largest and most sophisticated cloud providers are not immune to failure. Small errors, often human-made, can have widespread and significant consequences,” he said.
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, echoed those sentiments, noting that “everyone has a bad day — today Amazon had a bad day.” He added that while the cloud allows companies to scale quickly and efficiently, it also creates “a single point of failure” that can paralyze large sections of the digital economy.
Cori Crider, head of the Future of Technology Institute, drew a more dramatic comparison. “It’s a bit like a bridge collapsing,” she said. “An essential part of the global economy has fallen to pieces. The overreliance on Amazon, Microsoft, and Google — who collectively control around 70 percent of the cloud computing market — is unsustainable.”
Crider urged governments and corporations to diversify their infrastructure investments. “Once you have a concentrated supply in a handful of monopoly providers, when something fails, it takes a huge percentage of the economy down with it. We need to strengthen local and independent services to reduce the risks to national security, sovereignty, and economic stability,” she added.
Accountability and Preparedness
Some experts argue that companies using AWS also share part of the blame. Ken Birman, a computer science professor at Cornell University, said many businesses neglect to build robust backup systems to protect themselves against such disruptions. “Companies using Amazon haven’t been taking adequate care to build protection systems into their applications,” he said. “We know how to make these systems stronger and more secure — the problem is that many organisations don’t invest enough in resilience.”
Birman emphasized that redundancy and cross-provider backups should become standard practice for critical industries such as banking, healthcare, and aviation. “It’s not enough to rely solely on one cloud provider,” he said. “True digital security means being ready for failure, not assuming it will never happen.”
Broader Economic and Legal Fallout
While Amazon says normal operations have resumed, the wider economic impact is still being assessed. Many businesses suffered downtime that disrupted transactions, customer communications, and internal workflows.
Experts warn that the incident could spark legal and financial repercussions similar to those that followed last year’s global IT outage involving cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. Delta Airlines, one of the worst-hit companies during that event, is currently seeking to recover more than $500 million in losses after being forced to manually reset over 40,000 servers, causing major flight delays and cancellations.
Legal analysts say Monday’s AWS outage may lead to a new wave of lawsuits from companies that experienced operational losses, particularly those in finance and logistics. However, determining liability in such cases is often complex, given that most cloud providers include service disruption clauses in their user agreements.
A Wake-Up Call for the Digital Economy
For many industry observers, the latest outage serves as a wake-up call for policymakers and businesses to rethink the structure of global digital infrastructure.
“This episode shows how a technical issue in one region of the United States can ripple across the globe within minutes,” said Woodward. “It demonstrates both the power and the vulnerability of interconnected systems.”
As the digital economy becomes ever more central to global commerce, experts are urging governments to develop stronger oversight of cloud providers and encourage greater competition in the sector.
“Cloud technology has brought incredible benefits,” said Crider. “But when one company’s glitch can silence millions of users worldwide, it’s clear we need a more resilient and diversified internet.”
For now, Amazon insists its systems are stable and that steps have been taken to prevent a recurrence. Still, as users return to business as usual, the incident leaves an unsettling reminder: in a world increasingly powered by the cloud, even the strongest networks can have their breaking point.
