"Signal, like many other internet services, failed briefly during the sizable AWS outage that occurred on October 19 and 20. The cause, as AWS explained in its paragraph-starved post-mortem last week, was an error in AWS' automated DNS management system. And the loss of availability and productivity across the many AWS-dependent businesses has been estimated to have cost businesses more than a hundred billion dollars."
"AWS has about a third of the global market share for cloud computing services, according to Synergy Research Group. But a former AWS employee who corresponded with The Register argues the figure is more like half of the cloud computing market because AWS runs backend services for notional rivals like IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce. A recent report from HG Insights puts the number of businesses using AWS at more than 4 million, with particular concentrations within media, retail, internet services, manufacturing, and education. Our insider tells us thousands of government agencies also depend on AWS, including some national security workloads."
"Signal president Meredith Whittaker called attention to this massive dependency in a thread on the Mastodon social network, explaining how the concentration of power among cloud hyperscalers limits the options of services like Signal in terms of resiliency and network control. Whittaker said that the concentration of power among cloud hyperscalers (AWS, Google, and Microsoft) is less widely understood than she expected, which bodes poorly for efforts to craft realistic strategies to change this dynamic."
Signal experienced a brief outage during the large AWS incident on October 19–20 caused by an error in AWS' automated DNS management system. The outage contributed to widespread availability and productivity losses, with estimated economic impacts exceeding one hundred billion dollars. AWS holds a substantial portion of the cloud market; estimates range from about one-third to roughly half when backend services and vendor relationships are included. More than four million businesses use AWS, concentrated in media, retail, internet services, manufacturing, and education, and thousands of government agencies depend on AWS. Concentration among hyperscalers limits resiliency and network control and weak public understanding complicates efforts to diversify infrastructure.
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