Analyst: Amazon Web Services Outage Exposes Limits of Cloud Self-Regulation

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2025 — The internet’s dependence on a few cloud providers became impossible to ignore this week.

When Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud-computing arm, went dark for 13 hours Monday, banks, retailers, and streaming apps worldwide froze, reviving old questions about accountability in the cloud.

The outage, triggered by a minor Domain Name System update, had disrupted more than 2,000 enterprises and renewed debate over whether hyperscale providers should have faced the same reliability and transparency standards as traditional telecom networks.