What you need to know to make the most of them
On December 14, 2020, Google's authentication system ran out of space, meaning the system couldn't free up space automatically and crashed, locking out millions of users. It was one of the biggest internet outages in history, causing disruption and financial losses to many businesses.
On May 28, 2017, an outage at British Airways affected thousands of passengers. The incident was caused by an engineer at a data center near London Heathrow Airport, who accidentally disconnected a power supply. While reconnecting, a power surge crashed BA's systems.
While Facebook was trying to check its global network capacity, a mistake in the command shut down the entire system. The outage wasn't just an inconvenience for social media users but caused serious financial consequences. Facebook lost US$47.3 billion in market value during the downtime.
The outage caused worldwide disruption. Airlines canceled at least 1,400 flights, the London Stock Exchange Regulatory News Service went offline, and scheduled surgeries had to be canceled.
Sources: (Webopedia) (Live Science) (USA Today)
Just as Twitter was back in action, Instagram went down. Users were unable to access feeds, send messages, and even launch the app. The issue was resolved within a few hours.
A Microsoft outage took place in July 2024 when a security incident in CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor software caused Windows PCs to crash globally.
A malicious software called Mirai was the culprit behind the Dyn outage. It infected everyday devices like printers, cameras, and even baby monitors. Dyn was later acquired by Oracle.
On July 12, 2022, X, then Twitter, went down. Users were unable to log in or tweet due to system troubles. However, after 40 minutes, normal service resumed.
Dyn was a company that managed data traffic and acted as a domain name system (DNS) provider back in 2016. In October of that year, Dyn became the target of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, making popular websites like Netflix, Airbnb, and Amazon unreachable for many users.
On March 8, 2022, Discord went down at the same time as Spotify. The outage began with support pages seeming unstable and escalated to the application failing to connect and messages not sending. Discord went back online by around 3:41 pm Eastern Time. The full impact of the outage remains unclear.
AWS had another outage in December 2021 caused by a hardware failure at a data center. Disney+ and Spotify went down, and even Alexa started acting strange. Schools had to cancel exams as they couldn't access the online platforms they were using.
At 1 pm Eastern Time on March 8, 2022, Spotify users reported minor issues. However, the outage escalated for two hours. Google Cloud, the service provider for Spotify, announced they'd identified a malfunctioning component in their system.
The Amazon Web Services outage in 2017 began with a human mistake. An engineer at AWS was trying to fix a billing issue, but a typo in a command took down the cloud for hours, costing companies over US$150 million.
There are various factors that lead to internet outages. Accidental damage to cables, fiber lines, or towers can knock out the service. Technical glitches, such as software bugs and human mistakes during network maintenance can also lead to temporary outages.
On Tuesday, November 9, 2021, an internet outage hit Comcast users across the US. It was caused by a two-hour malfunction in how their network routes internet traffic. This resulted in data being sent to the wrong places, creating traffic jams and loops.
The search engine Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998.
In the late 1960s, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, the first workable prototype of the internet, was created. ARPANET allowed multiple computers to communicate with one another on a single network.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1990. The WWW allowed users to connect to webpages accessible through the internet.
In 1999, wireless fidelity, or Wi-FI, was developed. It initially covered a distance of up to 300 feet (91 meters.)
On April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer and unveiled the Apple I, the first computer with a single-circuit board and ROM (Read Only Memory).
In 1981, IBM released "Acorn," the company's first personal computer onto the market.
In 1945, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, two professors at the University of Pennsylvania, designed and built the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC). It was heralded as the first automatic, general-purpose, electronic, decimal, digital computer.
In 1968, Douglas Engelbart, an American engineer and inventor, revealed a prototype of the modern computer, including a mouse and a graphical user interface (GUI).
In 1977, the Commodore Personal Electronic Transactor (PET) was released. It was the first true personal computer and was especially successful in the education market.
In 1953, Grace Hopper, an American scientist and mathematician, developed the first computer language that became known as COBOL (COmmon, Business-Oriented Language)
Alan Turing, an English scientist and mathematician, invented the Turing machine in 1936. It was a device that could perform any mathematical operation. The central concept of the modern computer is based on his ideas.
In 1941, German inventor and engineer Konrad Zuse completed his Z3 machine, the world's earliest digital computer.
Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician, wrote the first computer program in 1848.
Swedish inventor Per Georg Scheutz and his son Edvard designed the world's first printing calculator in 1853.
The internet relies on computers for its very existence. In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard, a French merchant and inventor, invented a loom that used punched wooden cards to weave fabric designs automatically. The earliest computers would use similar punch cards.
In 1821, Charles Babbage, an English mathematician, invented the idea of a steam-driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers.
The world has experienced a number of outages, with the most recent being the July 2024 CrowdStrike incident, which impacted banks, airlines, and businesses. But what other incidents have disrupted the world? If you're keen to find out, click through this gallery now.
The biggest internet outages in history
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Initially developed for military purposes, the internet is now a mainstay of our daily lives. It has revolutionized how we communicate, shop, educate, and entertain. Most of us couldn't imagine the world without the internet, and when big sites go down, the impact is felt far and wide.
The world has experienced a number of outages, with the most recent being the July 2024 CrowdStrike incident, which impacted banks, airlines, and businesses. But what other incidents have disrupted the world? If you're keen to find out, click through this gallery now.