Websites, Apps Go Dark as Outage Zaps Amazon’s Cloud Unit

Amazon’s cloud services unit AWS was hit by an outage Monday, causing connectivity issues for many companies around the world and disrupting services for several popular websites and apps including Fortnite and Snapchat, The Japan Times reported.

AWS provides on-demand computing power, data storage, and other digital services to companies, governments, and individuals. (Photo: Amazon)

“We can confirm increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-EAST-1 region,” AWS said in an update on its status page.

AI startup Perplexity, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, and trading app Robinhood attributed the outages to AWS. “Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said in a post on X.

AWS provides on-demand computing power, data storage, and other digital services to companies, governments, and individuals.

Disruptions to its servers can cause outages across websites and platforms that rely on its cloud infrastructure.

AWS competes with Google’s and Microsoft’s cloud services. Amazon’s shopping website, Prime Video, and Alexa were all facing issues, according to Downdetector.

Fortnite, owned by Epic Games, along with Roblox, Clash Royale, and Clash of Clans were among the gaming sites that went down.

PayPal’s Venmo and Chime were among the financial platforms affected, the outage tracking website said.

Uber rival Lyft’s app was also down for thousands of users in the U.S. Messaging app Signal’s president, Meredith Whittaker, confirmed on X that their platform was also hit by the AWS outage.