A large-scale outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Friday caused widespread disruptions to internet services around the world, impacting everything from online shopping to streaming platforms and enterprise applications.

Millions of Users Affected Worldwide

According to monitoring site Downdetector, reports of service failures began appearing early Friday morning (UTC), with peak outage complaints spanning across the United States, Europe, and parts of Asia. Popular platforms such as Netflix, Slack, Zoom, and Shopify experienced downtime or latency issues.

Root Cause Linked to Networking Configuration

Amazon later confirmed that the problem was caused by a network configuration change in one of its primary U.S.-East-1 data centers — a region that handles a massive share of global traffic. The issue triggered cascading effects across dependent cloud services, including Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3).

Business and Government Services Impacted

The AWS outage didn’t just hit entertainment or e-commerce — critical business and government operations were also affected. Several financial institutions, logistics networks, and public information portals reported temporary service disruptions, halting operations for hours.

Amazon Responds and Restores Services

In a statement, AWS engineers said they had identified and resolved the root issue within hours, gradually restoring access to most users by late afternoon. “We understand how critical our services are to our customers, and we are taking steps to prevent a recurrence,” the company said.

A Wake-Up Call for Cloud Dependency

This outage underscores the internet’s heavy reliance on centralized cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. With more businesses migrating online, experts warn that even minor misconfigurations can cause global-scale digital blackouts.

Cybersecurity analyst Rachel Kim noted, “The AWS outage shows how a single point of failure in global cloud infrastructure can disrupt economies and communication systems simultaneously.”

AWS Faces Scrutiny Over Reliability

While AWS remains the world’s largest cloud provider — commanding over 30% of global market share — repeated outages in recent years have raised concerns about resilience and redundancy in cloud architecture. Analysts suggest that Amazon will likely accelerate investments in backup systems and regional failovers.

Conclusion: A Reminder of the Internet’s Fragility

The incident serves as a stark reminder that the digital backbone of the modern world still depends on a handful of centralized systems. As businesses recover, many are reassessing their multi-cloud and backup strategies to mitigate risks from future disruptions.