A major outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Wednesday caused widespread disruption to popular apps and websites, including Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, Duolingo, and Amazon's own retail platform. The UK's National Rail website and app also experienced slow response times due to the incident.
The outage, which affected AWS's DynamoDB database service, highlighted the global dependence on a small number of cloud providers. Experts warned of the risks of relying on a few companies for internet infrastructure. Cori Crider of the Future of Technology Institute said the UK is "dangerously overexposed to foreign Big Tech monopolies."
Amazon reported that service recovery was ongoing across all AWS services, with Lambda invocation errors fully recovered by early afternoon Pacific Time. However, the company continued to promote its upcoming 23 October event, sending an email to customers during the outage to encourage registration.
UK politicians demanded answers, with the House of Commons Treasury Committee writing to Economic Secretary Lucy Rigby to ask why Amazon has not been designated a "critical third party" to the UK's financial services sector. Meanwhile, some Post Office branches in London were unable to process Amazon parcel returns due to the outage.
