A worldwide Microsoft failure on Wednesday caused chaos online, taking down websites for Heathrow, NatWest, and Minecraft. The disruption lasted several hours and affected millions before systems were gradually restored later that evening.
Mass reports of website and service failures
Thousands of users flooded Downdetector with reports of websites failing to load or respond. Pages froze, logins timed out, and online services collapsed across continents.
Microsoft confirmed that users of Microsoft 365 faced long delays with Outlook and related tools. By 21:00 GMT, the company said many affected websites were running again after engineers reversed a recent update that caused the issue.
Azure cloud glitch spreads across the internet
Microsoft’s Azure cloud network, which supports much of the global internet, reported “service degradation” around 16:00 GMT. The company said the failure stemmed from “DNS issues,” the same technical fault behind Amazon Web Services’ major outage last week.
Amazon said its own systems were not affected.
In the UK, websites for Asda, M&S, and O2 went down temporarily. In the United States, users struggled to access Starbucks and Kroger’s websites during the same period.
Businesses battle to stay online
Microsoft confirmed that its business clients using Microsoft 365 experienced major disruptions. Some Microsoft pages displayed an error reading, “Uh oh! Something went wrong with the previous request.”
Because the company’s status page was also unreachable, Microsoft used its X account to post live updates.
NatWest’s main website went offline briefly, but its mobile banking, live chat, and phone lines remained fully available.
Consumer watchdog warns firms to act responsibly
The consumer group Which? reminded companies of their duty to support customers during outages. “Customers should keep proof of any failed or delayed payments in case they need to make a claim,” said Which? expert Lisa Webb. She urged anyone concerned about missed bills to contact providers and request fee waivers.
Scottish Parliament halts session after technical failure
In Scotland, lawmakers were forced to suspend business after technical problems disabled the Parliament’s online voting system. The delay postponed a planned debate on a land reform bill aimed at giving the government powers to intervene in private land sales and break up large estates.
A senior parliamentary source said the outage appeared to be linked to Microsoft’s global system failure.
Experts warn of risks from cloud concentration
Analysts said it was unclear how much of the internet was affected, though Microsoft Azure is estimated to control about 20% of the global cloud market. Microsoft said the outage resulted from “an inadvertent configuration change,” meaning an internal system adjustment caused unexpected damage.
Dr Saqib Kakvi of Royal Holloway University warned that dependence on a few major providers makes the web vulnerable. “When companies like Microsoft, Amazon, or Google fail, thousands of other services collapse too,” he said. He explained that cost pressures have forced most firms to rely on just a few cloud giants, increasing fragility across the internet.
Outage reveals how fragile digital systems remain
Professor Gregory Falco of Cornell University said the incident exposed the complexity and weakness of global digital infrastructure. “Azure and AWS may seem like single systems, but they are built from thousands of interconnected parts,” he explained. Some are managed by the providers themselves, while others depend on third parties like CrowdStrike, whose software update last year disrupted millions of Microsoft computers.
Falco warned that even a minor internal change can cause worldwide failures, proving how dependent the modern internet is on a few powerful networks.
