Mark has almost a decade of experience reporting on mobile technology, working previously with Digital Trends. Taking a less-than-direct route to technology writing, Mark began his Android journey while studying for a BA in Ancient & Medieval History at university. But since then, he's cast his eyes firmly on the future, with a deep love for anything that bleeps or bloops.
Outside of Android tech of all types, Mark loves to hike, play video games, build small plastic men that cost far too much, and spend time with his two daughters.
No, it's not you; a bunch of your favorite apps are down right now, as Amazon Web Services has taken a dive.
As reported by numerous sources, apps like Snapchat, Duolingo, and Alexa are affected, but so are a massive range of websites, with banking websites, Zoom, and even Amazon's Ring cameras experiencing problems.
Amazon Web Services "showing signs of recovery"
But new apps and sites keep getting hit
If you've tried to log into a number of websites or apps today, you might have noticed a few issues. Apps not signing in properly, websites failing to load. Heck, according to one report, even Amazon's automated parcel return service is struggling. And that's because Amazon's Web Services has suffered a pretty major downage.
The outage seemed to begin at around 4am ET, with apps like Snapchat and Duolingo being amongst the first hit. The problem spread rapidly, with banking websites and apps falling prey, as well as messaging apps like Signal, and heck, even blockbuster gaming hit Fortnite was hit by the problems.
Amazon's engineers were on the problem within minutes of the problem being discovered, but despite that, the issues have persisted. According to DownDetector's front page, most of the early victims of the outage have started to recover. But a proclaimation that signs of recovery were obvious proved to be premature, as the outage has since spread to Reddit recently. Not even your hot drinks are safe, as Starbucks is suffering under the outage's yoke.
So much of the internet is reliant on one provider
Which makes outages like this inevitable
Credit: Lucas Gouveia/Android Police | skodonnell/ShutterstockAmazon Web Services is an enormous provider of cloud computing, and its data centers hold the vital runnings of millions of apps and websites, and even games like Fortnite. It's so large it's actually one of Amazon's biggest divisions, and it's largely pre-eminent in the space. As such, when it suffers problems, almost everyone gets hit all at once, and the internet takes something of a sick day. As I write, more and more apps and services are struggling, and while Amazon's engineers are likely working overtime to get this fixed, there's no obvious sign when this will finally end.
For now, if you notice any problems with some of your favorite apps, websites, or games, it's likely that the Amazon Web Services outage is to blame, though it's a good idea to check DownDetector to be sure.
