Microsoft outage hits Outlook. AWS and Google users also report issues

TechPublished Thu, Nov 12 20263:54 PM ESTUpdated 11 Min AgoKey PointsA Microsoft outage on Thursday affected users of services like Outlook, Teams and 365.Google and Amazon Web Services users also reported outages.A sign on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, US, Oct. 26, 2026. David Ryder | ReutersMicrosoft suffered a widespread outage on Thursday that impacted thousands of users in North America, according to outage-tracking website Downdetector.com.The outage began shortly before 1 p.m. and affected services like Outlook, Teams and 365. Amazon Web Services and Google users also reported outages on the site. "We've determined a portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which is likely contributing to the connectivity errors," the company's Microsoft 365 Status account wrote in a post to social media platform X shortly after 1:30 p.m. ET.The company determined that the outage was caused by an increase in unavailable servers and launched a restart of impacted servers. The shutdown may be linked to failed health checks caused by a "specific component that's responsible for processing server health," Microsoft added."We've taken steps to prevent additional servers from being impacted while we work to return the affected servers to service," Microsoft added. Read more CNBC tech newsNvidia live updates: CEO Jensen Huang resigns, Colette Kress named interim chiefCoreWeave CEO Intrator tells CNBC he has canceled his planned share sale programMeta head of infrastructure will leave and be succeeded by former AWS cloud execAmazon’s Ring unveils flying drone and robot to patrol homes and businesses