New Delhi, Oct 20: A widespread outage affecting Amazon Web Services (AWS) disrupted major websites and apps worldwide on Monday, including Snapchat, Zoom, Duolingo, Roblox, Lyft, Coinbase, and Robinhood, according to reports by BBC and NDTV.
The cloud computing platform, which underpins millions of digital services, experienced technical issues primarily in its US East-1 region, leading to connection failures across multiple sectors – from gaming and finance to streaming and e-commerce.
Outage monitoring platform Down detector recorded more than four million problem reports globally, including over 400,000 in the UK within two hours of the disruption. Several major banks, including Lloyds and Halifax, also reported service interruptions. AWS confirmed that it was seeing “significant signs of recovery” as engineers worked to restore services. However, Amazon’s own platforms — including Prime Video, Alexa, and its main shopping site — were among those affected earlier in the day. The outage, one of the largest in recent months, also impacted AI startup Perplexity, gaming titles such as Fortnite and Clash Royale, and payment services Venmo and Chime. AWS remains one of the world’s most widely used cloud providers, competing with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
