A major AWS outage on Monday disrupted thousands of popular apps, websites, and online services, exposing how deeply the world relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The Amazon outage sent shockwaves through the internet, affecting platforms from Snapchat and Venmo to airline systems and corporate networks – marking one of the largest cloud service interruptions of 2025.
By late Monday afternoon, Amazon confirmed that its systems were “mostly back online,” though lingering issues remained.
“We continue to observe recovery across all AWS services,” the company said in an update, while noting that some functions – including its Lambda service, which lets developers deploy code automatically were still being restored.
Billions in Losses and Global Disruptions
Experts estimate the financial fallout could reach staggering levels.
Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of internet performance firm Catchpoint, warned that the AWS outage could cost the global economy “hundreds of billions of dollars” in lost productivity and business disruptions.
“The incident highlights the complexity and fragility of the internet, as well as how much every aspect of our work depends on the cloud to function,” Daoudi told CNN.
The outage reportedly delayed flights, halted financial transactions, and left millions of users unable to access key apps or complete work tasks.
Root Cause: A Fault in Amazon’s EC2 Network
According to Amazon’s AWS outage update, the problem originated in the company’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) network – a backbone service that allows businesses to rent virtual computing power instead of maintaining their own servers.
Amazon engineers traced the issue to an internal monitoring system designed to measure network load, which “went haywire” and caused widespread connectivity issues.
To stabilize performance, AWS throttled the creation of new EC2 instances, limiting cloud traffic while working on a permanent fix.
By early afternoon, Amazon Web Services said it was “seeing connectivity and API recovery for AWS services,” including DynamoDB, SQS, and Amazon Connect.
However, the company acknowledged that the U.S.-EAST-1 region – one of AWS’s most critical data hubs remained unstable for several hours.
Internet Platforms Go Dark
Real-time tracking site Downdetector reported a spike in outage alerts across multiple companies. Over 10,000 Amazon users reported issues at one point, while Snapchat outages peaked at more than 22,000 reports.
Other major services impacted included Google, Delta Airlines, Venmo, Coinbase, Ring, and Perplexity AI – all of which rely on Amazon cloud infrastructure.
Users across the U.S. and Europe flooded social media with complaints such as “Is AWS still down?”, “Why is Snapchat not working?”, and “Is Canvas down right now?”
Many educational platforms like Canvas Student and work apps like Asana also faced access errors, leading some to believe it was a broader global internet outage.
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AWS Dominance Raises Concerns
The incident underscores the massive scale of Amazon Web Services and the potential risks of global dependency on a few dominant cloud providers.
As of 2024, AWS controlled 37% of the global cloud market, according to Gartner, with over $107 billion in annual revenue.
The company’s vast network spans 38 regions and over 6 million kilometers of fiber-optic cabling, serving customers like Disney, Capital One, the U.S. Army, and the NFL.
Given its scale, an Amazon Web Services outage can have ripple effects across nearly every sector from e-commerce and fintech to healthcare and entertainment.
Recovery Underway, But Questions Remain
Amazon said it has implemented “additional steps” to restore normal operations and prevent similar failures in the future.
The company continues to monitor the network and investigate the AWS outage cause, emphasizing that most services are back online.
Despite progress, users are still asking, “Is AWS down right now?” and “When will Canvas be back up?” as lingering disruptions affect select regions and applications.
A Wake-Up Call for the Internet Age
This Amazon outage is another reminder of how deeply the digital economy relies on a handful of cloud providers.
When AWS sneezes, the internet catches a cold. As one analyst noted, “A single misfire in AWS’s internal network can ripple across the web – freezing apps, halting payments, and grounding planes.”
With services gradually stabilizing, Amazon faces renewed scrutiny over infrastructure resilience and transparency.
For now, businesses and users alike are breathing a sigh of relief but also preparing for the next time the internet’s backbone falters.
