AWS went down, taking parts of the Internet with it — what we know

Close up of AWS sign at their offices in SOMA district

(Image credit: Sundry Photography | Shutterstock)

While many people think of Amazon as a great place to score some deals, it also owns Amazon Web Services. This server system hosts a significant portion of the digital world, from Amazon Alexa devices to fast food apps and more.

Unfortunately, that means when AWS goes down lots of services suffer. And that's exactly what happened today (June 7) when, according to several outlets and Down Detector, a website that tracks real-time outage information, AWS was hit with a major outage. The Verge reported that the issue appears to be tied to an issue with US-EAST-1 region that started at around 3 p.m. ET.

A look at the AWS Health Dashboard confirmed that the company's Northern Virginia servers experienced increased error rates and latency issues, which caused severe degradation that may help explain why some of your favorite services weren't working for a little while.

Update: As of 6:37 p.m. ET, AWS says "the issue has been resolved and all AWS Services are operating normally."

What services powered by AWS went down

As of writing, here are all the services that were down or experiencing some problems according to Down Detector. It appears Microsoft Azure also experienced some issues, which may be related.

Amazon Web Services
McDonald's app
Amazon
Southwest
Amazon Alexa
Pluto TV
Ally
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Seige
Microsoft 365
Destiny
FIFA
Instagram
IMDb
VRChat
Nike Plus
Delta Air Lines
TikTok
Fortnite
Hinge
Overwatch 2

The official AWS Service Health Dashboard offers up-to-date intel on what's happening, and throughout the outage it gave updates. Shortly after 6 PM ET Tuesday (June 7) it reported that all issues had been resolved.

Malcolm McMillan is a staff writer for Tom's Guide, writing about the latest in tech, gaming and entertainment with a particular focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-based tools like ChatGPT. He has written up much of our coverage on the latest AI tools including ChatGPT, the new GPT-powered Bing and Google Bard. He also covers A/V tech such as televisions, soundbars and more, in addition to covering VR headsets from the Meta Quest 3 to the PS VR2.

Before writing for Tom's Guide, Malcolm worked as a fantasy football analyst writing for several sites and also had a brief stint working for Microsoft selling laptops, Xbox products and even the ill-fated Windows phone. He is passionate about video games and sports, though both cause him to yell at the TV frequently. He proudly sports many tattoos, including an Arsenal tattoo, in honor of the team that causes him to yell at the TV the most.