Observed Signal · Mar 5, 2026 · Outage · Source: CNBC Technology · Impact: 3/5 · Sentiment: Negative
Amazon Faces Shopping App Outage Amid Ongoing Disruptions
Amazon experienced a hours-long outage on its website and shopping app that prevented some users from checking out, viewing prices, or accessing account information. The disruptions spiked around 2 p.m. ET, with Downdetector showing more than 22,000 reports two hours later, and were largely resolved by about 8 p.m. ET. Amazon said the incident was related to a "software code deployment" and confirmed services were restored. Users also reported issues with Amazon Fresh grocery ordering. The report notes this comes amid separate AWS cloud disruptions following drone strikes that damaged data centers in the Middle East, though Amazon said its cloud services were functioning normally at the time of the consumer-facing outage.
Outage affected Amazon's e-commerce storefront and grocery ordering, disrupting transactions, shopper access, and potentially retail-media delivery and measurement; combined with recent AWS regional incidents, it highlights operational risks for commerce and ad supply tied to Amazon.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Amazon's website and shopping app were down or degraded for some users, preventing checkouts and access to account information.
- Downdetector recorded a spike of more than 22,000 outage reports around two hours after the incident began (around 2 p.m. ET).
- Amazon said the incident was caused by a "software code deployment" and that the site and app were restored.
- Users reported problems placing orders and viewing purchase history on Amazon Fresh during the outage.
- The outage occurred amid separate AWS regional disruptions after drone strikes damaged data centers in the UAE and Bahrain; Amazon said its cloud services were functioning normally.
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AWS US‑EAST‑1 Outage Disrupts Major Internet Services
A technical failure in Amazon's Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) data center region caused a large AWS outage that disrupted major consumer services for hours. The incident began with a DNS resolution problem affecting DynamoDB, which cascaded into network load balancers and the EC2 service used to launch cloud servers. High-profile platforms — including Snapchat, Disney+, Fortnite and Roblox — experienced downtime, and Amazon's own warehouse and seller systems were impacted. Amazon implemented an initial fix within hours but full recovery and backlog clearance took about a day. The event echoes prior widespread outages from the same region in 2021 and 2023 and has renewed concerns about internet centralization and the systemic risk of relying on a small set of cloud providers.
Drone Strikes Disrupt Amazon UAE Data Centers, Impacting Services
Drone strikes damaged Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the United Arab Emirates and caused a nearby strike in Bahrain, taking affected facilities offline and triggering region-wide outages. Consumer apps (Careem, Alaan, Hubpay), banks (ADCB, Emirates NBD), enterprise services including Snowflake, and other digital services reported disruptions tied to AWS infrastructure failures. AWS said strikes caused structural and power-delivery damage and recommended customers migrate workloads to alternate regions while recovery work continues. The attacks occurred amid broader regional escalations following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, which Tehran then reportedly responded to with waves of attacks targeting critical infrastructure.
Massive AWS Outage Takes Down Major Services
An AWS outage on October 20, 2025 disrupted a wave of widely used online services as user access slowly returned. The incident affected Canva, Snapchat, Facebook, and Amazon, and also disrupted popular apps and games including Pokémon GO, Fortnite, the PlayStation interface, and the Duolingo learning app. Outages were visible on the monitoring site allestörungen.de, which links the disruptions to the AWS incident. Canva has said it is experiencing significantly increased error rates due to a problem with its underlying cloud provider and is working with the provider to restore full access. Perplexity, via CEO Aravind Srinivas, reported that their AI answering service was down as a result of the AWS issue. At the time of reporting, there was no clear timeline for a full restore, and providers expected a rapid resolution in the hours ahead. The event underscores the fragility of cloud dependencies across consumer and enterprise services.
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