Why the AWS outage exposed the risks of depending on a single company | CBC News

"A few days after Amazon's cloud services company AWS had an outage that for millions of users plunged popular websites and apps into the dark, questions still linger about why we're so reliant on a handful of companies in the first place and why it might be hard to prevent another outage. Reminiscent of last year's CrowdStrike outage and the Rogers outage of 2022, Monday's disruption demonstrated just how many corners of the economy are dependent on a single company."

"Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit and Spotify went dark. The Starbucks app along with DoorDash and Grubhub struggled to take food and drink orders, and the Lyft app had trouble connecting drivers with riders. Some Venmo users couldn't transfer money, and some Zoom users couldn't make video calls. Streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon's own Prime Video were affected, and messaging services WhatsApp and Signal had issues. U.K. government websites stopped loading properly, as did some of the platforms used by its National Health Service."

"As Atlantic writer Will Gottsegen put it, tech outages happen "but under our current system, a bad day for Amazon can be a bad day for everyone." And the current system is one in which AWS captured nearly a third of the global cloud services market during the second quarter of this year, with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud not far behind. Together, these three companies own more than 60 per cent of the cloud market."

An AWS outage caused widespread disruptions across consumer apps, streaming, payments, ride-hailing, food delivery, messaging, and some government and health platforms. Major services affected included Snapchat, Spotify, Starbucks, DoorDash, Lyft, Venmo, Zoom, Netflix, Disney+, WhatsApp, Signal, and U.K. government and NHS platforms. Cloud market concentration is substantial: AWS held nearly a third of global market share in Q2, and AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud together control more than 60 percent. Companies can grow through early innovation or alleged anti-competitive practices. Regulators have raised concerns that dominant cloud stakes harm competition, and past outages show recurring systemic dependence.

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