Tech Giants Including Google, OpenAI, and Spotify Suffer Major Outages Affecting Tens of Thousands of Users

On Thursday, a widespread tech outage affected major platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Google, OpenAI, and Spotify, disrupting services for tens of thousands of users. The issues began to surge around 2 p.m. EST, with numerous reports flooding Downdetector.com, a popular service for tracking outages. Cloudflare, which offers essential services to several of the affected companies, acknowledged the problems but did not immediately respond to CBS News’ inquiries. On their website, they noted that several of their services were experiencing intermittent failures and that they were actively investigating the issue. By 3:12 p.m. EST, Cloudflare reported that services were beginning to stabilize, though they warned that some intermittent errors might persist as systems recovered and caches replenished. Spotify experienced the highest number of outages, with nearly 46,000 user reports by 3 p.m. EST. Many users complained of difficulties accessing playlists, streaming music, and connecting to the service. Google Cloud also faced significant disruptions, logging over 13,000 reports on Downdetector. Affected users reported issues with a variety of Google services, including their cloud storage and compute instances. The outage also impacted a range of other platforms, causing service disruptions and connectivity issues for a broad spectrum of users. Among the notable sites experiencing problems were: Reddit, where users encountered difficulty posting and commenting. Discord, with many users unable to join voice channels or access chat features. Slack, facing widespread connection issues and delays in message delivery. GitHub, where developers reported slow response times and errors when trying to push code changes. Despite the widespread nature of the outage, the extent of the impact varied across different regions and services. Many users took to social media to express frustration, sharing their experiences and hoping for a swift resolution. As of the latest updates, the primary focus remains on restoring full functionality and understanding the root cause of the issue. Tech companies are increasingly reliant on cloud services, and outages like this highlight the vulnerabilities in highly interconnected digital infrastructures. The incident underscores the importance of robust disaster recovery plans and redundant systems to minimize downtime and maintain user trust. For now, users are advised to check the status pages of the affected platforms for real-time updates and to try refreshing their applications or rebooting their devices if they encounter persistent issues. Companies involved in the outage are working diligently to bring services back online and resolve the underlying problems.