Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a major outage yesterday that you may or may not have been affected by.
Trapped here at my desk in the salt mines, typing away and being witty while trying to get feral kitty bungalows ready for the (FINALLY!) approach of much cooler weather during breaks, I didn't really know much about it.
Then, my sweet neighbor texted me to ask if I had any innerweb problems. I was like 'Nope, dammit.' Meant I still had to write. She works from home, too, and was having problems with being held at a ready status on her bank screen. It kept spinning on her.
It turns out it wasn't AT&T's fiber optics. The disruption was on Navy Federal's end, courtesy of AWS. Glad I didn't have to get on the site to pay a bill.
When you start looking at everything connected to AMAZON Web Services, even though your brain naturally identifies it with just Amazon, it starts to remind you of that old children's song about the head bone being connected to the pinkie toe.
It turns out AWS kind of damn near runs the world, and yesterday's burp showed how dangerous a proposition that is.
This is a good starter graphic.
While @amazon is a monopoly, it’s clear that this is a MAJOR concern when so many companies use @awscloud to function… #AWS #Amazon #outage pic.twitter.com/wmatK2MmOV
— Nick D'Agostino (@realNickDags) October 20, 2025
The tracking website Downdetector reported that over 8 million websites were affected.
AWS has been a money maker for Amazon, boasting the most amazing and diverse group of app developers, financial concerns, foreign countries, and (gasp!) American military, to name but a few. All have sold their innerwebs soul to this one, single cloud operation.
Monday’s service disruptions show just how widespread AWS is and the critical role it plays in supporting the web. And that’s resulted in a lucrative business for Amazon.
Here’s a snapshot of AWS’ reach by the numbers:
- Accounted for 37% of the global cloud market share in 2024 according to market research firm Gartner
- Generated $107.6 billion in revenue in 2024
- Runs on 6 million+ kilometers of fiber optic cabling
- Available in 38 geographic regions
- Notable customers include Disney, the US Army, Capital One, United Airlines, NFL
Graphically, this is how big Amazon is in the cloud marketplace - they dominate.
1/3 of the entire cloud market. Wild. pic.twitter.com/Q4o3hTd5oG
— Morning Brew ☕️ (@MorningBrew) October 20, 2025
Were they hacked, or did something just fry?
When CNBC posted this video, little did the reporter and anchor know there were still hours of outage to go.
Amazon found multiple 'cascading failures' at its northern Virginia hub (the oldest and busiest in the system) as they worked feverishly to fix the initial interruption. Fifteen hours of worldwide service disruptions later, the company said it had chased all the gremlins through and out of the system.
...AWS services — data storage, computing power, and other building blocks — underpin a large chunk of the internet, accounting for about a third of the cloud market. Downdetector tracked disruptions at hundreds of sites, including for financial services outfits Venmo and Robinhood Markets Inc., Apple Inc.’s music and TV offerings, software companies such as Zoom Communications Inc., Salesforce Inc. and Snowflake Inc., food-services giants including McDonald’s Corp. and gaming companies like Epic Games Inc. Even Amazon’s own services, including Alexa and the Ring home security system, weren’t immune.
AWS earlier said a digital directory for a key database service malfunctioned, causing cascading failures when software reliant on the widely used data trove was unable to retrieve information. By early Monday New York time, the company said it had identified and fixed the underlying issue, which hit its operations on the US East Coast, AWS’s largest cluster of data centers.
But as the company worked to fix that issue, engineers found that other subsystems — including one necessary for customers to launch new rented servers — had been hit by the database outage.
Most glitches on major tech systems are fixed quickly. Still, interconnected technology systems have meant that problems at one company can cause catastrophic impacts across the global economy. Last year, a faulty software update at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. grounded flights and crashed systems around the world, causing billions of dollars in damages.
The interesting question asked was:
...Corey Quinn, chief cloud economist with Duckbill, which advises businesses on their cloud spending, said Monday’s outage was likely the worst for AWS since a major disruption in December 2021. “The question is, is this the big one? Or is it that now we are more interconnected” and dependent on Amazon, he said.
I believe the phrase is 'all the eggs in one basket.' When the basket crashed to the floor, all the eggs were in jeopardy.
For what it's worth, analysts and those at the upper echelons of the businesses affected are once again asking themselves, 'Is this a stupid move?'
SURVEY SAYS: YES!
...Bloomberg reports that yesterday's AWS outage in the U.S. East 1 region was one of the company's worst disruptions since 2021. The incident could prompt companies to diversify their cloud infrastructure risk, potentially slowing AWS' growth while intensifying competition from Microsoft and Google.
"The outage will likely fuel customers wanting to spread their infrastructure between multiple clouds, which could be a positive for smaller vendors like Google," Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Anurag Rana wrote in a note, adding that it's unlikely to result in any meaningful market share loss for Amazon due to the difficulty of shifting workloads between clouds and industrywide capacity constraints.
Although it's doubtful any of them diversifies their risk structure despite this accidental and, most importantly, repairable warning shot.
What happens in a natural, widespread catastrophe, or a malevolent bad actor like the Chinese find that back door in to shut the whole show down?
...If the AWS outage left you frustrated, imagine the chaos when China moves on Taiwan or disrupts critical infrastructure amid the ongoing Salt Typhoon and/or unleashes its full cyber arsenal against the U.S. Let's hope the trade war is resolved soon, because a nation suffering from "TikTok brain rot" might not survive a week without its social media.
With the AWS outage, now’s as good a time as any to post this old strip.#AWS pic.twitter.com/i9oEuFI0p9
— DESIGN THINKING! Comic (@DT_comic) October 20, 2025
Foreign analysts are also asking why their countries' cloud services are hosted predominantly by U.S. companies.
I would posit that, besides the U.S. technical advantage, the issue also relates to intrusive and repressive European et al internet regulations.
...“We should be asking ourselves the obvious question: Why are so many critical UK institutions, from HMRC to major banks, dependent on a data center on the east coast of the US? Sovereignty means having control when incidents like this happen, but too much of ours is currently outsourced to foreign cloud providers,” he wrote in an email.
“When a single point of failure can take down [government departments], it becomes clear that our reliance on a handful of US tech giants has left core public services dangerously exposed.”
Beege ADDS: Lemme tuck this addition in here real quick-like. For as much as I write about this issue, you'd think I would have added it, but ITRando has it exactly right.
Left out a major reason US companies dominate.
— ITRando (@it_rando) October 21, 2025
Power. Datacenters require consistent, reliable power. EU can't provide that anymore.
Europe has a power problem, plain and simple, and it doesn't look to be getting better any time soon.
The UK also has a problem faced by countries that are in the process of adopting a digital ID - what happens when the cloud goes down? What happens when citizens who rely on their digital wallet for doctors, medicine, or any administrative services suddenly cannot access or arrange those services?
Although, as Katie Hopkins points out, since the British seem to be intent on tying your 'carbon footprint' - established by the amount of groceries you buy - to your digital ID...
In future, Brits will have a daily carbon allowance - thereby rationing food, fuel & travel.
— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) October 16, 2025
Linked to your Digital ID, environmental ‘lockdowns’ are already being hardwired in. pic.twitter.com/eb4yDmY9pl
...perhaps you could score some cupcakes if the whole system poops the bed.
You know, instead of being digitally nannystated into gruel with a side of bug mash because you'd blown your carbon allowance.
Maybe all those forbidden eggs in one basket aren't necessarily a bad thing.
I'd still prefer the military find something else as a backup.
That's just me.
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