An error in a software update from Amazon had a cascading effect that caused widespread disruptions across the internet Oct. 20. While powerful companies like Amazon create economic opportunities and can drive progress toward a more sustainable future, the situation exposed how relying heavily on one corporation isn't without major cons.
What's happening?
As detailed by NPR, an outage at Amazon Web Services began around 3 a.m. ET Oct. 20 in Northern Virginia, affecting the functionality of popular websites and apps.
Reddit, Canva, Flickr, and United Airlines were among those reporting problems, along with Amazon itself. Government, health care, and financial platforms around the world also experienced disruptions, according to Wired and TechCrunch.
The outage-causing error was introduced during a software update to the database service DynamoDB. Amazon announced AWS was back to normal at 6:01 p.m.
Why is this important?
Amazon holds a large portion of the worldwide cloud computing market. Synergy Research Group estimated that Amazon leads Microsoft and Google with a 30% market share, while the other two have 20% and 13%, respectively.
Cybersecurity expert Betsy Cooper, director of the Aspen Institute's Policy Academy, told NPR that the outage exposed worrying vulnerabilities in our ways of doing business, even though services from big companies like Amazon are convenient and offer robust data protection.
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"We all have an incentive to use the big companies, because they're so ubiquitous and it's easier for us to access all of our data in one place," she said. "That's great until something goes wrong, and then you really see just how dependent you are on a handful of those companies."
What else do Amazon's operations mean for consumers?
Amazon has invested more than $50 billion in data centers in Virginia, where the outage began before rippling outward, per NPR.
In the eyes of many, the company's footprint in the commonwealth — which, more broadly, hosts more than 35% of hyperscale data centers worldwide, per the Virginia Economic Development Partnership — has become symbolic of what can happen when a wealthy corporation invested in cloud computing and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence sets up shop.
While some residents happily report job growth, tax cuts, and new revenue to support schools, others say data-center development is destroying their neighborhoods, creating constant noise and massive amounts of pollution.
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Absolutely 👍 Amazon has community-friendly policies that also benefit the environment, including reducing plastic in packaging, adding electric vans to its delivery fleet, and supporting solar projects to power more data centers.
Yet the AWS outage has left many wondering whether enough is being done to ensure major corporations are held accountable when things go wrong.
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