Amazon Restores AWS Services After Power Outage; Cloud Unit Said to Face US Antitrust Probe

Hulu, Slack, Epic Games, and other several apps and websites were up and running after being hit by a brief power outage at one of Amazon’s data servers on the US East Coast. “The issue has been resolved and the service is operating normally,” Amazon Web Services (AWS) said.

Amazon earlier said the outage had affected its platform that provides computing capacity to cloud network operated by AWS.

Office messaging app Slack had said it was experiencing issues with file uploads, message editing, and other services.

A major outage in the same region earlier this month brought down streaming platforms Netflix and Disney+, trading app Robinhood as well as Amazon’s e-commerce website.

Separately, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is advancing an antitrust probe into AWS, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

FTC officials have contacted companies in the past few months to gather information about competition issues related to AWS, according to the report which cited unnamed people familiar with the matter.

The probe was undertaken as part of an investigation begun during the Trump administration, which kicked off investigations into the four tech giants.

Amazon did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

“The FTC doesn’t confirm the existence of or comment on investigations,” said agency spokeswoman Betsy Lordan.

© Thomson Reuters 2021