Mad Things That Happened When Amazon’s AWS Went Down
Amazon is a global company with plenty to offer people in terms of convenience. At the same time, it is not a company without its issues and controversies.
The brutal business practices have been criticised, for example, whilst Jeff Bezos is far from the most loved person on the planet. Whether we like it or not, though, the tendrils of the globally famous company stretch far and wide, which was made very clear to everyone during the recent AWS outage.
It caused issues for people pretty much everywhere online, but some of the problems can best be described as at least a little bit mad.
What is AWS?
If you have been watching the news recently, you will no doubt have heard people reference AWS when it came to the outage that seemed to bring the internet to a halt. AWS is an acronym that stands for Amazon Web Services, being a subsidiary of Amazon that offers on-demand cloud computing platforms as well as Application Programme Interfaces to both individuals and companies on a pay-as-you-go basis.
The exact services offered will depend on what is required, with everything from networking to storage, processing capacity to software tools available through Amazon.
AWS started in the early part of the 2000s, with many of the first-generation services launching between 2006 and 2010. Some of the more notable companies that have moved over to using AWS over the years include the likes of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the United States Navy and the British Government Communications Headquarters.
There have been outages of the AWS system over the years, but the one that occurred on the 20th of October 2025 might well be the most significant, purely because of how many different companies it affected.
Smart Beds Didn’t Work
If you thought the people working at Amazon had a sleepless night when it became clear that the AWS system had gone down, that was as nothing compared to people who own smart beds. Eight Sleep is one company that offers such smart beds, which the company says allows people to ‘sleep the way you were meant to’.
It isn’t just the bed that is smart either, with the cover that you put over yourself and the pillowcases that you use all combining in order to ensure that you have the best night’s sleep possible, even if you and your partner have different sleep requirements.
@davidbombal WARNING: Your Bed Needs the Cloud? An AWS outage left $3,000 smart beds bricked, blaring alarms and blasting heat. See why cloud devices fail, how much data they phone home (up to 28GB/month), and smarter offline options. #smartbeds #iot #aws ♬ original sound – davidbombal
As you might well imagine, however, such smart beds require internet connectivity in order to allow the various components to communicate with one another. The ‘Pod’ sold by Eight Sleep tracks biometric data in order to control the temperature of the sleepers, leaving some of the users having to sleep in incredibly hot temperatures and others unable to move their bed out of an inclined position.
It left Eight Sleep not only embarrassed and facing frustrated users, but also having to find ways to future-proof their offerings to ensure that any future outage wouldn’t affect the product.
VAR Had Problems
Anyone who has watched a Premier League game in the modern era will be all too aware of how frustrating it is to have to wait for the Video Assistant Referee to make a decision over whether a decision made by the on-pitch referee should stand or not. It isn’t so much that everyone has to wait in and of itself that’s the problem, but more the fact that even after the waiting period is over, the officials still seem to make the wrong decision more often than not. The introduction of Semi-Automated Offside Technology was supposed to help deal with the issue of waiting, but that didn’t happen on Monday night.
The offside lines were drawn for the first time this season to rule out Thiago’s second goal for Brentford ❌
There is no Semi-Automated Offside Technology available today due to the AWS outage 👀 pic.twitter.com/7vxv6fZ3CE
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) October 20, 2025
The company behind the SAOT that the Premier League has brought in, Genius Sports, decided to move its infrastructure over to Amazon Web Services back in the summer. That was seen by those concerned as being a smart move that would ensure the company’s long-term stability. That might go on to be the case, but what it meant on Monday night was that the VAR had to go back to measuring where players were in relation to one another after Brentford scored a goal against West Ham United, thanks to the fact that the outage had removed its ability to semi-automate the decision.
Imagine how frustrating it must have been for Brentford supporters who play Wordle on the New York Times app, use Duolingo to brush up on their foreign language skills and were trying to make bank transfers as the match was going on. They will have been unable to play Duolingo, seen their Wordle streak disappear and fail to be able to send a bank transfer, all whilst waiting for the Premier League to confirm whether a goal had been scored or not.