Half the Internet Takes a Coffee Break as Amazon Cloud Glitch Knocks Out Apps Worldwide

 

In a digital age where even our doorbells are online, today felt like the internet collectively hit the snooze button. A massive Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage sent shockwaves across the web, taking down everything from Alexa and Ring to Snapchat, Fortnite, and even a few banking apps — leaving millions of people scratching their heads (and fumbling for light switches that refused to cooperate).

The disruption began early this morning, around 8 a.m. BST, and quickly escalated. Reports poured in from users unable to log in, stream, or even check their smart doorbell feeds. DownDetector — a site that tracks online outages — saw thousands of complaints roll in from both the U.S. and the U.K., with AWS’s North Virginia (us-east-1) region identified as the trouble spot.

By late morning, Amazon announced that the “underlying issue has been fully mitigated” and that “most operations are succeeding normally.” But for many users around the globe, the frustration wasn’t over — apps and services were still glitchy well into the afternoon.

Among those affected were household names: Ring, Alexa, Amazon Prime Video, Snapchat, Fortnite, Duolingo, Zoom, GOV.UK, and several major banks including Lloyds and Halifax. In short, the internet felt a little emptier — and a lot quieter.

Experts Weigh In

While the internet collectively groaned, cybersecurity experts urged calm. Jake Moore, a security advisor at ESET, believes the problem likely came from an internal system error rather than a deliberate cyberattack — though he cautioned that we can’t completely rule that out until Amazon releases a full report.

“There’s no current evidence of hacking or coordinated attacks,” Moore noted, adding that what’s more likely is a technical hiccup that caused a cascading failure — where one malfunction snowballs into many.

Professor James Davenport of the University of Bath called it “worrying” that a problem in a U.S. data center could disrupt U.K. banking services. “It suggests an overreliance on certain cloud regions,” he said. “Proper auditing should catch that, but it’s easy for unexpected dependencies to slip through.”

The Bigger Picture

AWS — which powers around 30% of the global cloud infrastructure — sits quietly behind many of the internet’s biggest platforms. So when something goes wrong in one of its key regions, the ripple effect is enormous.

Dr. Manny Niri, a cybersecurity lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, described the incident as a “serious failure” at the core of the AWS infrastructure. “This isn’t a small software bug — it’s likely a breakdown in a key component of the internet’s backbone,” he said. “It’s a wake-up call for companies to diversify their cloud regions and strengthen backup systems.”

Andy Aitken, CEO of Honest Mobile, summed it up neatly: “It’s a reminder of how fragile the web can be. A single glitch can ripple across half the internet. Thankfully, recovery is usually quick — but it shows just how dependent we’ve become on a handful of cloud providers.”

Users React

Naturally, social media lit up with complaints, confusion, and a healthy dose of humor.
“Ring doorbell down for 13 hours — I can’t even see who’s at the door,” one frustrated user posted.
Another wrote, “Alexa won’t turn on my lights. I’ve had to walk to the switch like it’s 1995.”
And one user summed up the mood perfectly: “I came to Twitter just to make sure it’s not only me — again.”

Lessons From the Outage

For now, Amazon says systems are stabilizing and engineers are still investigating the root cause. The company has promised a detailed post-incident report once everything is back to normal.

In the meantime, today’s chaos serves as a stark reminder: the internet, for all its sophistication, is still surprisingly fragile. When one cloud falters, it can rain on everyone’s parade.

So if your Alexa ignored you this morning or your Fortnite session froze mid-battle, don’t worry — it wasn’t personal. The cloud just needed a reboot.