Global Outage of Amazon Web Services Disrupts Major Online Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a significant global outage on October 20-21, 2025. This disruption affected millions of users across various popular platforms such as Snapchat, Roblox, Robinhood, Fortnite, and major airlines like United and Delta. The disruption, which lasted approximately 15 hours, originated from AWS’s critical Northern Virginia data center. The cause was traced back to an error in a software update to DynamoDB, Amazon’s database service.
This outage underscored the vulnerabilities of the modern internet infrastructure. AWS controls approximately 30% of the global cloud computing market. A range of services, including banking apps, gaming sites, social media platforms, and home security systems like Ring, were affected. Recovery efforts began around 2:22 AM PDT. However, the incident raised serious concerns about the concentration of internet services under a few major cloud providers.
Industry experts have estimated the total economic impact to be in the billions of dollars. Businesses grappled with payment processing failures, customer service disruptions, and operational delays throughout the affected period.
Source: CNN