A major Amazon Web Services outage on Monday disrupted apps and websites around the world, exposing the risks of relying on a small number of cloud providers.
Platforms affected included Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, Duolingo, and Amazon-owned services such as its main retail site and Ring doorbell system. Downdetector reported over 8.1 million problem reports, with 1.9 million from the US, 1 million from the UK, and 418,000 from Australia.
Many services recovered within hours, but some experienced ongoing issues throughout the day. By Monday evening, Amazon confirmed all AWS cloud services had “returned to normal operations.”
In the UK, Lloyds Bank and its subsidiaries Halifax and Bank of Scotland were affected, along with the HM Revenue and Customs website. Ring users also reported non-working doorbells. Other disrupted platforms globally included Wordle, Coinbase, Slack, Pokémon Go, Epic Games, PlayStation Network, and Peloton.
Amazon said the outage began around 8 a.m. UK time in its US East Coast region and was caused by an internal system responsible for monitoring load balancers, not a cyber-attack. The company temporarily limited requests to stabilize services.
Experts warned the incident shows the dangers of the internet relying on a few tech giants. Dr. Corinne Cath-Speth of Article 19 said: “We urgently need diversification in cloud computing. The infrastructure underpinning democratic discourse, independent journalism and secure communications cannot depend on a handful of companies.”
Cori Crider from the Future of Technology Institute added: “The UK can’t keep leaving its critical infrastructure at the mercy of US tech giants. With AWS down, the lights went out across banking, communications, and more.”
Professor Madeline Carr of University College London noted the counterpoint that large cloud providers offer global, resilient services. Yet she emphasized: “Most people outside those companies would argue that relying on so few providers is risky.”
Last year, a similar global disruption affected airports, healthcare, and businesses after a botched Microsoft Windows update.
UK authorities confirmed they were in contact with Amazon. A government spokesperson said: “Through our established incident response arrangements, we are in contact with the company, who are working to restore services as quickly as possible.”
The UK House of Commons’ treasury committee has also questioned why Amazon is not designated a “critical third party” in the financial sector, which would bring it under regulatory oversight. Committee chair Meg Hillier noted that Amazon had told the committee its services offered “multiple layers of protection” for financial customers.
