CMB News Of The Day 📰🗞️🗞️

“Major Internet Disruption: AWS Outage Knocks Reddit, Snapchat, and Venmo Offline“🚨

When Amazon Web Services hiccups, the entire internet feels it. That was the story early Monday morning when AWS, the backbone of countless digital services, experienced a major outage that sent shockwaves through the web.

The trouble began around 12:11 a.m. PDT, when AWS reported an “operational issue” in its northern Virginia data hub — one of the most critical regions for global internet traffic. The problem quickly spiraled into widespread disruption, bringing down or slowing major platforms like Reddit, Snapchat, Roblox, Venmo, and United Airlines, according to outage tracker Downdetector.

The culprit? A glitch in the internet’s “phonebook” — the Domain Name System (DNS), which helps connect website names to their digital addresses. Amazon later confirmed that the underlying issue had been “fully mitigated,” and by morning, most services were returning to normal.

Still, the brief blackout highlighted just how much of the digital world depends on a handful of massive cloud providers. Data from BuiltWith shows more than 76 million websites rely on AWS, including over 20,000 that generate at least $1 million a month in revenue. When AWS stumbles, the effects ripple far beyond Amazon’s own ecosystem.

Originally born out of Amazon’s need to scale its own e-commerce operations, AWS has grown into a powerhouse that supplies computing infrastructure to governments, startups, and Fortune 500s alike. The division now accounts for more than half of Amazon’s operating income — about 53% last quarter — solidifying its dominance over rivals like Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Despite the chaos online, Wall Street barely flinched. Amazon shares dipped just over 1% during the outage but quickly recovered, suggesting investors view the disruption as a temporary blip rather than a sign of deeper issues.

Monday’s outage serves as a reminder that while the cloud makes modern life possible, it also concentrates risk in the hands of a few tech giants. When one cloud service falters, the internet’s blue sky can turn gray in an instant.