What is Amazon Web Services?

What is Amazon Web Services? Learn about the cloud platform at the center of Monday's internet issues

FROST IN THE WINDSHIELD COMING UP AGAIN. ALL RIGHT, RANDY, THANK YOU. WE DO HAVE A BREAKING UPDATE ON THAT INTERNET OUTAGE THAT’S AFFECTING WEBSITES NATIONWIDE. AMAZON WEB SERVICES JUST SHARING IN THE LAST TEN MINUTES THAT THEY ARE STARTING TO SEE SOME SIGNS OF RECOVERY. BUT THIS HAS IMPACTED A LOT OF APPS, A LOT OF WEBSITES, A LOT OF SERVICES. THERE IS STILL A BACKLOG. SO POPULAR APPS, INCLUDING SNAPCHAT, RING, ROBLOX MAY NOT BE WORKING. OF COURSE, MANY AMAZON BASED SERVICES AS WELL. NOW THOSE OTHER SERVICES RELY ON AMAZON AND THE PROBLEMS APPEAR TO HAVE STARTED ABOUT 3:00 IN THE MORNING. NOW, AMAZON SAYS IT HAS ENGINEERS WORKING ON THE ISSUE. IT’S NOT CLEAR WHEN IT WILL BE FULLY RESOLVED. OF COURSE WE’LL UPDATE YOU. WE’VE BEEN CALLING CHECKING IN WITH LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT BECAUSE MANY OF THEM RELY ON THIS SERVICE AS WELL. THE OUTAGE DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE AFFECTING ACCESS TO 911 OR EMERGENCY SERVICES IN OUR AREA. WE ARE TRACKIN

Updated: 5:49 AM CDT Oct 20, 2025

Editorial Standards ⓘ

What is Amazon Web Services? Learn about the cloud platform at the center of Monday's internet issues

Updated: 5:49 AM CDT Oct 20, 2025

Editorial Standards ⓘ

An Amazon Web Services outage has caused significant issues for a number of high-profile websites Monday morning, including Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, online broker Robinhood and the McDonald’s app. But just what is AWS? AWS is a widely used cloud platform that offers more than 200 services including cloud-based computing power, storage and databases for IT infrastructure.Instead of maintaining their own servers and IT infrastructure, companies purchase these cloud-based tools from providers like AWS to run websites and the functions on them. In cloud computing, these services are paid for as they're used, which is often less expensive than physical infrastructure. Monday's issues were reported in the US-EAST-1 region. According to its website, AWS has 120 availability zones across 38 geographic regions.While AWS is a large service provider in the cloud space, it's not the only game in town. Several other companies offer similar cloud products like Microsoft and Google.

But just what is AWS? AWS is a widely used cloud platform that offers more than 200 services including cloud-based computing power, storage and databases for IT infrastructure.

Instead of maintaining their own servers and IT infrastructure, companies purchase these cloud-based tools from providers like AWS to run websites and the functions on them. In cloud computing, these services are paid for as they're used, which is often less expensive than physical infrastructure.

Monday's issues were reported in the US-EAST-1 region. According to its website, AWS has 120 availability zones across 38 geographic regions.

While AWS is a large service provider in the cloud space, it's not the only game in town. Several other companies offer similar cloud products like Microsoft and Google.

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