Millions In New York Lose Access To Popular Online Services

A massive outage took down some of the most popular websites and apps used by New Yorkers. Here’s what really happened and who’s to blame.

Many popular websites experienced technical issues, frustrating users across New York State and around the globe.

Amazon Web Services Outage Angerry New YorkGetty Images

Issues started overnight Sunday into Monday with Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing company that provides the online infrastructure for scores of sites and services.

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Amazon Web Services makes up about 33 percent of the world’s cloud infrastructure market.

Top names include Amazon, Disney, Lyft, McDonald’s, NY Times, Reddit, Ring, Robinhood, Snapchat, T-Mobile, United Airlines, Venmo, Verizon, Zoom, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Alexa, Roblox, Pinterest, Microsoft, FanDuel, AT&T, Apple Music, Instacart, and Venmo.

Getty Images for Amazon Web Serv

According to Downdetector, users of those companies and many more were all hit with tech problems.

Delta Airlines said they had small number of flight delays as a result, while United Airlines said its website and app were impacted.

Incoming: Thousands Fleeing Florida, California, Texas For New York
State

“If a company can break the entire internet, they are too big. Period,” U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren said about the outages. “It’s time to break up Big Tech.”

Widespread Outages RestoredGetty Images

The AWS disruption is believed to have started with the company’s northern Virginia data center, which in turn led to outages worldwide.

Monday evening, Amazon Web Services confirmed it resolved widespread internet outages that caused issues with multiple popular websites much of Monday.

In an update the company confirmed that all AWS services are back to “operating normally.”

11 Amazon Items Now Under Urgent Recall

11 Amazon Items Now Under Urgent RecallAmazon has listed these products on its recent safety recalls page. Gallery Credit: Michelle Heart Consumer Product Safety CommissionAtomi Smart HeatersName of Product:Atomi Smart HeatersHazard:May power on without user input leading to fire and burn risksRemedy:RefundRecall Date:July 11, 2024Units:99,400 Consumer Product Safety CommissionTonGass Pool Drain CoversName of Product:TonGass Pool Train CoversHazard:Product does not conform to pool and spa safety standards. Could possibly trap swimmers.Remedy:RefundRecall Date:July 11, 2024Units:1,650 Consumer Product Safety CommissionHatch Rest Baby Sound Machine AdaptersName of Product:Power Adapters sold with Rest 1st Generation sound machinesHazard:Housing around AC Power adapter may come off when pulling adapter from wall. Exposed power prongs could lead to a shock risk for users.Remedy:ReplaceRecall Date:July 3, 2024Units:919,400 Consumer Product Safety CommissionSWOMOG Children’s Two-Piece Pajama SetsName of Product:SWOMOG Children’s Two-Piece Pajama SetsHazard:PJs made in China do not meet USA’s product flammability standards for kid’s sleepwear. Could lead to a burn hazard for kids.Remedy:RefundRecall Date:July 3, 2024Units:27,400 Consumer Product Safety CommissionBaseus Magnetic Wireless Charging Power BanksName of Product:Baseus Magnetic Wireless Charging Power BanksHazard:Internal battery may overheat leading risk of fireRemedy:RefundRecall Date:June 27, 2024Units:132,000 Consumer Product Safety CommissionRazor Icon Electric ScootersName of Product:Razor Icon Electric ScootersHazard:Downtube might separate from scooter’s floorboard, leading to a fall risk.Remedy:RefundRecall Date:July 25, 2024Units:7,300 Consumer Product Safety CommissionBesrey Twins StrollersName of Product:Besrey Twins StrollersHazard:This stroller fails to meet several safety regulations. The front seat could lead to entrapment. The restraint system and rear seat pose fall hazards. The grab bar poses a choking hazard if a child bites the foam.Remedy:RefundRecall Date:July 25, 2024Units:3,045 Consumer Product Safety CommissionPapablic Archie Infant SwingsName of Product:Papablic Archie Infant SwingsHazard:Fails to meet safety regulations of infant sleep products and could pose a suffocation risk if you leave baby to sleep in swing. Also contains a button or coin-cell battery without being labeled.Remedy:RefundRecall Date:August 1, 2024Units:2,700 Consumer Product Safety CommissionOphanie Large Pink Area RugsName of Product:Ophanie Large Pink Area RugsHazard:Rug manufactured in China does not meet USA’s standards for flammability for carpets and rugs. Could pose a fire hazard.Remedy:RefundRecall Date:July 25, 2024Units:5,200 Consumer Product Safety CommissionLED Light-up Jelly Ring ToysName of Product:LED Light-up Jelly Ring ToysHazard:Product violates federal regulations for battery-operated toys as it contains a button cell battery that can be accessed without tools. This could cause serious injuries like internal chemical burns or death if ingested.Remedy:RefundRecall Date:August 1, 2024Units:4,100 Consumer Product Safety CommissionBeberoad New Moon Travel BassinetsName of Product:Beberoad New Moon Travel BassinetsHazard:Does not meet federal standards for infant sleep products. Could pose a fall hazard if used on elevated surfaces.Remedy:RefundRecall Date:August 1, 2024Units:1,940

Inside Amazon: A Detailed History of America’s Biggest Online Retailer

Inside Amazon: A Detailed History of America’s Biggest Online RetailerStacker compiled a list of key moments in Amazon’s history and its current business from a variety of sources. Here’s a look at the events that turned an online bookstore into a global conglomerate and a self-made entrepreneur into the world’s second-richest man. Gallery Credit: Andrew Lisa Nomad Ventures, Inc./Corbis // Getty Images1994: Bezos founds AmazonWhen Jeff Bezos founded Amazon out of his Seattle garage in 1994, he set himself on a path to become the richest man in the world–he’s now worth $128 billion. It was the beginning of a company that would change the way people buy and sell things around the globe and spell doom for traditional retail stores in the coming decades. Spencer Platt // Getty Images1997: Amazon IPOs on NASDAQWhen Amazon went public in 1997, it had 256 employees and was still known as “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore.” Its stock price at the time of its initial public offering was $16 per share, and that the public could now buy into the company injected it with a massive influx of capital to grow and expand. Today, Amazon’s stock is worth more than $3,000 a share. Equestro Etino // Wikimedia Commons1998: Amazon buys IMDb and expands business beyond booksAmazon’s first significant acquisition was IMDb, which it bought for about $55 million. The move made Amazon more than just an online bookstore and positioned it for a run as a multimedia conglomerate. Today, IMDb is still one of Amazon’s most popular subsidiaries, attracting over 190 million monthly users and holding the title of the most popular movie website on Earth. Yves Forestier/Sygma // Getty Images2001: Turns first profitable quarterAmazon lost money for its first few years as a public company, not turning a profit until the fourth quarter of 2001, when it booked a paltry $5 million in the black. It reflected Bezos’ philosophy that investing in the future was more important than meeting quarterly earnings targets. It remains the company’s foundational financial philosophy. Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto // Getty Images2002: Amazon offers free shipping over $99 for the first timeIn 2000 and 2001, when Amazon first experimented with offering free shipping on large orders during the holiday season, the company realized that shipping costs were one of the main barriers to people buying things online. That year, Amazon introduced Free Super Saver Shipping, which offered free shipping on orders over $99–that would soon drop to $49, then $25. It was the genesis of Amazon Prime and the modern shipping wars.
Smith Collection/Gado // Getty Images2005: Amazon Prime with free two-day shipping launchesBy 2005, Amazon determined that the company that dominated online retail would be the one that not only shipped for free but shipped fast for free. To get customers to spend more, it launched Amazon Prime, which cost $79 a year and promised free two-day shipping on most items. Not only did Prime force all other retailers to compete on shipping, but it spawned legions of Amazon loyalists who, after already having subscribed to Prime, considered Amazon their home base for online shopping. JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP // Getty Images2006: Amazon Kindle is launchedUnlike tablets and smartphones, which do everything in one device, the Amazon Kindle was purpose-built only to deliver a superior reading experience for digital books. In developing the Kindle e-reader, Amazon returned to its roots as an online bookstore and reasserted itself as the single-biggest name in reading in the modern era. Chesnot // Getty Images2006: Amazon AWS is launchedBy 2006, broadband Internet was becoming a mainstream service, and Amazon entered the cloud infrastructure space with Amazon Web Services. AWS launched with little fanfare, but soon dominated the sector and became one of Amazon’s most powerful limbs. AWS now does $12.7 billion a year in annual sales and owns over 30% of the market, more than its next three closest competitors–Google, Microsoft, and IBM–combined. Kevork Djansezian // Getty Images2007: AmazonFresh is launchedIn 2007, Amazon attempted to do with grocery shopping what it did with retail and books–make the physical store an obsolete relic of the past. Grocery-delivery service AmazonFresh rolled out gradually at first–it’s still not available everywhere–but it was the start of Amazon positioning itself as a giant in the grocery industry in the following decade. Rodin Eckenroth/FilmMagic // Getty Images2010: Amazon Studios is launchedBy 2010, streaming media was clearly the wave of the future, with streaming companies producing original content to compete with major studios and networks like HBO–and Amazon would not let that future belong to Netflix or its competitors without a fight. That year, it launched Amazon Studios, which has since produced notable films such as “Manchester by the Sea” and “You Were Never Really Here.” Its TV shows include titles such as “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” [Pictured: The primary cast from the Amazon Original “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”]
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP // Getty Images2014: Amazon acquires TwitchBy 2014, Amazon’s massive cloud infrastructure was robust enough to handle Twitch, a gaming streaming service known as the YouTube of video games. The $970 million purchase gave Amazon a service with 15 billion minutes of content and 55 million users who spent more than 100 minutes per day logged on. Amazon was now a gaming giant. Smith Collection/Gado // Getty Images2014: Amazon acquires Whole FoodsOn June 16, 2014, stocks for grocery store companies plummeted when Amazon announced it would purchase Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. While Whole Foods was not a juggernaut in the grocery space, the move meant Amazon was no longer dabbling in groceries as a niche service. The world’s mightiest online retailer was now a full-fledged player in the brick-and-mortar grocery store business. Emma McIntyre // Getty Images2017-2020: Bezos richest man in the worldWhat started as an idea to sell books through an emerging technology called the Internet in 1994 would earn Jeff Bezos the title coveted by ambitious entrepreneurs since time immemorial: the richest man in the world. Bezos fell to the second spot in early 2021 when Elon Musk became the richest person in the world, but Bezos’ fortune is still an estimated $184 billion. JASON REDMOND/AFP // Getty Images2018: Amazon Seattle HQ biodome spheres openIn 2018, Amazon introduced a physical space unlike any other in the world, a bizarre and enthralling combination of space-age tech and a natural bounty reminiscent of a rainforest. The Spheres, a connected cluster of greenhouse globes filled with both ordinary and exotic plants are a biodome retreat in the heart of urban Seattle for the exclusive use of Amazon’s 40,000 regional employees. To its home city of Seattle, Amazon brought a touch of the Amazon. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis // Getty Images2018: HQ2s announced in NYC and Northern VirginiaIn 2018, Amazon announced the new locations of its massive move to split up its North American corporate headquarters. The winners were a multi-city swath of Northern Virginia and Long Island City, New York. In exchange for billions in tax incentives, Amazon would bring tens of thousands of jobs to the two communities. Stephanie Keith // Getty Images2019: HQ2 plans in NYC are canceledAlthough New York had pushed hard to attract Amazon, the company’s Long Island City venture was controversial from the start. Unions, community activists, and local elected officials expressed concerns that Amazon’s presence would drive up home prices, gentrify the neighborhood, and muscle out the poor. Even more concerning were accusations that the city’s mayor and state’s governor had conspired in secret to give billions to Amazon when that money was desperately needed for community programs. The firestorm was drawn along sharp political lines; the community was divided, and on Valentine’s Day 2019, Amazon withdrew from the deal. David Becker // Getty Images2019: Amazon invests $700 million in electric car maker RivianIn 2019, Amazon expanded even farther away from its humble beginnings as an online bookstore when it invested $700 million in Rivian, a Michigan-based electric vehicle startup and direct threat to Tesla and longtime Bezos rival Elon Musk. Just as it had been an early player in the e-commerce, free-shipping, cloud computing, and streaming-media revolutions, the move proved once again that Amazon would spend big to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing. New Line/WireImage // Getty Images2019: Amazon spends around $5 to $6 billion on original contentIn 2017, Jeff Bezos began giving massive budget allocations to Amazon Studios to buy the rights to the blockbuster “Lord of the Rings” franchise. The effort was the start of a push to position Amazon Studios at the top of the original content pyramid with the likes of HBO and Netflix. That effort culminated with an investment upwards of $6 billion in 2019. Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto // Getty ImagesNow: US e-commerce market share of 47%The undisputed king of online retail, Amazon, represents 47% of e-commerce in the United States, in some part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s expected to capture fully half of the market share in 2021. KEREM YUCEL/AFP // Getty ImagesNow: 185 fulfillment centers”Fulfilled by Amazon” is the stamp of approval buyers want to see when they order something on Amazon. The promise that comes with it is made possible by Amazon’s 185 massive and high-tech fulfillment centers. In the mid-1990s, Amazon’s single warehouse also contained its office. Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto // Getty ImagesNow: More than 1 million employeesIn 2019, Amazon added 100,000 workers in three months. In 2020, Amazon added 400,000 workers to meet the surge in demand resulting from the pandemic. Today, more than 1 million people collect a paycheck from Amazon. Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesNow: First Amazon union forming at warehouseAmazon warehouse workers in Alabama have organized a union under the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union. The warehouse opened in March 2020, during the first weeks of the pandemic in the U.S. The company, notorious for its union-busting practices, is doing everything it can to stop the union and has embarked on an aggressive campaign to delay the union election and convince workers to vote no. If the workers elect to make the union official, it will be the first Amazon union in America. Aytac Unal/Anadolu Agency // Getty ImagesNow: Over 150 million Prime subscribersWhat started as an idea to create brand loyalty and repeat customers through a subscription-based service for free shipping has now grown to include a massive library of streaming video and music, as well as a library of books, a personal photo service, cloud storage, grocery services, and same-day or even same-hour free shipping. Amazon Prime subscriptions have now topped nine figures. SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP via Getty ImagesNow: Jeff Bezos steps down as CEOOn Feb. 2, 2021, Jeff Bezos announced he would be stepping down as CEO in the summer of 2021. He will be the executive chairman. Andy Jassy, who heads the company’s cloud computing division, will replace him. Drew Angerer // Getty ImagesNow: Amazon faces antitrust probesAny organization that consolidates as many products and services, commands as much of the market share, and wields as much political clout as Amazon is bound to attract the wrong kind of attention. The Federal Trade Commission launched antitrust investigations in 2019 into allegations it’s using its considerable muscle to harm competitors. Alvin Chan/SOPA Images/LightRocket // Getty ImagesNow: #2 on Fortune 500The Fortune 500 is a list of the 500 largest corporations in the United States, which combine to represent two-thirds of the U.S. GDP, a cumulative $14.2 trillion in revenue. On the 2020 list, only Walmart stands in front of Amazon. Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance // Getty ImagesNow: 4% of all retail sales in USThanks mainly to the rise of Amazon, online retail is growing at three times the rate of overall retail. That dynamic, which Amazon was the driving force behind, has given Amazon a full 4% of all retail spending in the United States.

10 More Amazon Items Sold in New York Recalled

10 More Amazon Items Sold in New York RecalledUSDAPerdue FoodsHazard: Ready-To-Eat Chicken Breast Nugget and Tender Products Due to Possible Foreign Matter Contamination. Do Not Eat. Return For Refund FDAMarabou Sea Salt chocolate barBonBon – A Swedish Candy Co. of New York, NY is recalling every Marabou Sea Salt chocolate bar, because it may contain undeclared almonds, wheat, and nuts. People who have an allergy or severe sensitivity to almonds and wheat run the risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reaction if they consume these products. FDA Full Circle Market Coconut Milk Chocolate Almond Crunch“Nature’s Promise” brand Cashewmilk Chocolate Almond Crunch Non-Dairy Frozen Dessert. Reason For Recall: Undeclared Cashew CPSCSamsung Recalls Slide-In Electric Ranges Hazard: Front-mounted knobs on the ranges can be activated by accidental contact by humans or pets, posing a fire hazard. Remedy: Repair CPSCSMEG USA Recalls RefrigeratorsHazard: The refrigerator door can detach and fall off, posing an injury hazard. Remedy: Repair FDAThal Golden SpicesName: Bikano Moong Dal 350g Hazard: Potential to be contaminated with SalmonellaFull refund offered CPSCBJ’s Wholesale Club Recalls Berkley Jensen GazeboHazard: The gazebo’sroof panels can dislodge in high winds, posing an injury hazard. Remedy: Repair CPSCMamibaby and Cosy Nation Baby LoungersHazard: Suffocation Risk and Fall and Entrapment Hazards
“The recalled baby loungers violate the federal safety regulations for Infant Sleep Products because the sides are too low to contain the infant; the sleeping pad is too thick, posing a suffocation hazard; an infant could fall out of an enclosed opening at the foot of the lounger or become entrapped; and the loungers do not have a stand, posing a fall hazard if used on elevated surfaces. These violations create an unsafe sleeping environment for infants,” the CSPC states
Remedy: Refund CPSCTrader Joe’s Company Recalls Mango Tangerine Scented CandlesHazard: The candle flame can spread from the wick to the wax causing a larger than expected flame, posing a fire hazard. Remedy: Refund CPSCStanley Black & Decker Recalls DeWALT Battery Walk-Behind MowersHazard: If water gets into the mower’s handle support while the battery is installed, the mower can fail to shut off when the bail handle is released or start without a key, posing a laceration hazard to the user. Remedy: Repair