Amazon Web Services outage disrupts major websites, apps worldwide— report

• Photo credit to Amazon

By TechWatch PH Staff

A major outage in Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday, October 20, left dozens of popular websites and apps inaccessible worldwide, highlighting the massive reach and reliance on the world’s largest cloud provider.

According to the reports, the disruption rippled across industries, bringing down major platforms including Snapchat, Zoom, Roblox, Fortnite, Canva, Slack, Duolingo, and Coinbase. Outage tracker Downdetector also listed MyFitnessPal, Life360, Clash Royale, Wordle, Signal, Smartsheet, Pokémon Go, Epic Games, PlayStation Network, Peloton, and Rocket League among the affected services.

“Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue,” said CEO Aravind Srinivas in a post on X.

”We’re working on resolving it,” Srinivas added.

According to outage tracker Downdetector, as of 4:29 p.m., the site received 458 reports of Amazon Web Services outages, marking one of the sharpest global spikes of 2025.

Amazon’s own services were not spared. Users reported problems accessing Amazon.com, Prime Video, and Alexa during the downtime.

As of Q3 2024, AWS holds 31 percent of the global cloud infrastructure market, ahead of Microsoft Azure (20 percent) and Google Cloud (12 percent). Industry data estimates cloud infrastructure revenues at USD 84 billion, growing 23 percent year-on-year — underscoring the scale of dependence on a handful of providers for critical online operations.

While AWS has not yet released an official explanation, the incident demonstrates how a technical fault in a single regional hub can cascade into global disruption — a stark reminder of the internet’s centralized cloud backbone and its far-reaching consequences when it falters.