A large-scale outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday caused widespread connectivity problems across major websites and digital platforms around the globe. The issue originated in the provider’s US-EAST-1 data-centre region, one of Amazon’s most critical infrastructure hubs, and quickly rippled across multiple continents.
Amazon’s own services among the first affected
Amazon confirmed “increased error rates and latency” across several of its core cloud functions. The disruption immediately affected Prime Video, Alexa, and even Amazon.com’s retail operations. Engineers are reportedly “working on multiple paths to accelerate recovery,” but the event once again highlights how deeply the global web depends on AWS infrastructure.
Major platforms go dark
The outage spread rapidly, hitting a long list of high-traffic digital platforms.
Among those affected were:
- Snapchat, which reported login and message-delivery failures.
- Fortnite, whose servers became temporarily unreachable for many players.
- Coinbase Global, where users struggled to view balances or execute trades.
- Venmo, PayPal’s payment app, which suffered connection timeouts.
- Perplexity AI and Signal Messenger, both confirming downtime linked to AWS instability.
- Even Canva, the widely used design platform, experienced major disruptions in exporting and saving projects — illustrating how diverse sectors were caught in the same digital storm.
Cloud dependency becomes a global risk
The incident underscored a growing concern within the tech industry: the digital economy’s concentration risk. With AWS powering everything from streaming and payments to AI startups and government services, even a brief failure can paralyse thousands of organisations simultaneously.
Analysts note that this kind of event could prompt companies to consider multi-cloud redundancy, ensuring critical applications can switch between cloud providers during infrastructure crises.
European and German perspective
In Germany and Bavaria, businesses relying on AWS-backed tools for e-commerce, logistics or content delivery reported temporary slowdowns. Although no long-term damage was observed, the event served as a reminder that digital resilience is now a strategic requirement rather than a technical detail.
Signs of recovery
By late Monday evening (20 October 2025), Amazon engineers reported “signs of recovery in several regions,” though full restoration was still in progress. AWS said it would publish a detailed Post-Event Summary explaining the cause once the incident is resolved.
For millions of users — from casual gamers to corporate clients — the outage demonstrated the invisible yet enormous role that cloud services play in keeping the internet’s daily rhythm alive.
