6 stories tracked · from 35 outlets · last coverage 2026-11-14 · Rising · ranked by independent sources, not by us
Microsoft has said it is "deeply sorry" for a global outage that caused almost 24 hours of disruption. Experts quoted by the BBC say the event is a "stark reminder" of how heavily the world relies on a small group of big tech providers.
Slashdot, quoting a report from Ars Technica, says a global outage affecting a wide range of Microsoft 365 services was still ongoing Friday morning after starting midday Thursday. The outage hit users of Microsoft email, cloud and AI services. Microsoft documented the full list of affected services and moved early Friday to protect customers from losing emails during the disruption. The headline attributes to an expert the view that the outage may be worse than Amazon's or CrowdStrike's, though the excerpt does not name the expert or explain the comparison.
Deutsche Welle reports that a Microsoft outage disrupted Outlook and Teams worldwide, with reports coming from scores of countries and territories. According to the outlet, Microsoft said it was "not aware" of malicious activity that could have caused the outage. Microsoft also said repair efforts are ongoing but not progressing as expected.
On Thursday, a widespread Microsoft 365 outage disrupted access to Outlook email and other services including Teams, with Slashdot citing more than 129,000 Downdetector reports, and Microsoft said it was investigating issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes in the Americas. Microsoft attributed the problem to a portion of its infrastructure experiencing elevated loads, and Variety, Slashdot and Newsweek describe the outage as affecting North America or the US, while The Verge and The Guardian report users affected globally.
