Major AWS Outage Disrupts Amazon, Alexa, Prime Video, and Other Major Apps
A widespread outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) has caused significant disruptions to major online platforms including Amazon.com, Alexa, Prime Video, Snapchat, and Canva, affecting users particularly in the United States.
Key Takeaways
- Major AWS outage originating from the US-EAST-1 region.
- Amazon.com, Alexa, Prime Video, Snapchat, Canva, and others affected.
- AWS has confirmed increased error rates and latencies.
- Some minor glitches reported in India, but services recovering.
Services Affected
The outage impacted a wide range of popular services. Users reported Amazon.com’s homepage failing to load, Alexa voice commands becoming unresponsive, and Prime Video showing repeated connection errors. Other affected platforms included Robinhood, Perplexity AI, Canva, and Venmo.
AWS Confirms Technical Issues
Amazon confirmed the disruption through its AWS Service Health Dashboard, stating: “We can confirm increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-EAST-1 Region.”
The US-EAST-1 region, based in Northern Virginia, hosts a significant portion of AWS’s cloud infrastructure, meaning outages in this region typically cause widespread internet disruptions.
Platform-Specific Impacts
Perplexity AI’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas, directly linked their service outage to AWS issues. He posted on X: “Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.”
User Reactions and Global Impact
As the outage spread, frustrated users flooded social media platform X with reactions and memes. One user posted: “Amazon Alexa/ Amazon/ AWS is reportedly down for thousands of users right now. Are you one of them? #amazon #amazondown #amazonalexadown #awsdown”
While some platforms in India experienced minor glitches, services were reportedly recovering without long-term disruption during the festive season.
