A significant outage in Amazon’s cloud computing network on Tuesday badly affected services at a wide range of US corporations for more than five hours, highlighting how concentrated the industry of keeping the internet operating has become.

The Amazon Web Services disaster mostly hit the eastern United States, but it also disrupted everything from airline bookings and auto dealerships to payment applications and video streaming services, as well as Amazon’s own large e-commerce business. This included The Associated Press, whose publishing system was down for most of the day, severely hampering its capacity to post news reports.

Amazon has yet to say anything about what went wrong. In fact, Amazon’s communications on Tuesday were limited to terse technical explanations on an AWS dashboard and a brief statement delivered via spokesperson Richard Rocha that acknowledged the outage had impacted Amazon’s own warehouse and delivery operation but said the company was “working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”

Approximately five hours after multiple firms and other groups began reporting troubles, the company announced in a statement on the AWS status page that it had “mitigated” the underlying problem that was causing the outage, which it did not specify. Some impacted businesses needed many hours to properly inspect their systems and restart their own services.

Amazon Web Services was formerly led by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who took over for founder Jeff Bezos in July. Amazon’s cloud-services business is a big profit source for the company. According to Synergy Research, it controls about a third of the $152 billion cloud services industry – a higher stake than its nearest competitors, Microsoft and Google combined.

According to Carl Malamud, a technologist and public data access campaigner, the AWS outage demonstrates how much Big Tech has twisted the internet, which was initially meant as a distributed and decentralized network capable of surviving mass tragedies such as a nuclear assault.

Amazon Web Services was formerly overseen by Andy Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos in July. Amazon’s cloud-services division generates a significant amount of revenue for the corporation. According to Synergy Research, it owns almost one-third of the $152 billion cloud services business — a larger share than its closest competitors, Microsoft and Google combined.

The AWS outage, according to Carl Malamud, a technologist and public data access activist, highlights how much Big Tech has distorted the internet, which was originally intended as a distributed and decentralized network capable of enduring mass calamities such as a nuclear attack.

Then, in October, Facebook — now known as Meta Platforms — blamed a “erroneous configuration update” for an hours-long global outage that knocked out Instagram and WhatsApp as well as its own platform.

According to Doug Madory, director of internet monitoring at Kentik Inc, a network intelligence business, issues began midmorning on the US East Coast this time. One of the most renowned names hit was Netflix, which suffered a 26 percent decline in traffic to its streaming service, according to Kentik.

Customers attempting to book or change flights with Delta Air Lines were unable to connect to the carrier. “Delta is working hard to restore functionality to its AWS-supported phone lines,” stated Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant. Customers were urged to utilize the airline’s website or mobile app instead, and the company apologized.