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Amazon.com Suffers Outage: Nearly $5M Down the Drain?

Posted by timothy on from the what-is-the-richter-scale-for-net-outages? dept.

First time accepted submitter Brandon Butler writes "Amazon.com, the multi-billion online retail website, experienced an outage of unknown proportions on Thursday afternoon. Rumblings of an Amazon.com outage began popping up on Twitter at about 2:40 PM ET. Multiple attempts to access the site around 3:15 PM ET on Thursday were met with the message: 'Http/1.1 Service Unavailable.' By 3:30 PM ET the site appeared to be back online for at least some users. How big of a deal is an hour-long Amazon outage? Amazon.com's latest earnings report showed that the company makes about $10.8 billion per quarter, or about $118 million per day and $4.9 million per hour." Update: 01/31 22:25 GMT by T : "Hackers claim credit."

114 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, if a website is down, and someone goes to buy something, that means they are unable to purchase it later when the site is back up?

    The logic behind how they arrived at that number is slightly flawed.

    1. Re:Hmm... by Lawrence_Bird · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well.. Timothy wrote the headline... what makes you think he has ever used logic? But yes, the amount "lost" is probably a small fraction.

    2. Re:Hmm... by WeatherServo9 · · Score: 2

      No, people can purchase items once the site is back up, and I would agree that the number provided isn't accurate. But it may have still cost a lot of sales; some people will not go back to the site once it is up. They may buy from another site that is up (I've done this before when a retail site was down), go to a brick and mortar store, or just forget to go back later because what they were looking for wasn't terribly important.

    3. Re:Hmm... by icebike · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But Brandon Butler wrote the summary, and lifted the calculations directly from Network World, so a lot of people just assume that people try exactly once, then give up and never return.

      Its totally silly of course, because Amazon often has the best prices, and people will simply wait. Nothing purchased on line constitutes an emergency to most people.

      The cost to Amazon is probably not really that great. There might be some hourly people sitting around doing nothing. Some network staff might have been called in to work overtime.

      But averaged over a month, I doubt there will be an actual drop in sales.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    4. Re:Hmm... by xevioso · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Some people will go back, some people will not. The point is there does not seem to be any indication that this number was taken into account when the 4.9$ million number was estimated. Perhaps the first hour it's offline they "lose" 4.9$million, but the next hour it comes back on they make 8$million when they normally would have only made 4.9$million. There's no way to know.

    5. Re:Hmm... by NatasRevol · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not to mention that the $10.8B number is sales revenue, not earnings. So it's NOT how much they make in a quarter.

      They actually only earned $97M last quarter. Or $7.5M per week or $1M per day. Or $41,000 per hour.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    6. Re:Hmm... by cod3r_ · · Score: 2

      Exactly what I just thought lol.. They didn't make 4.9 that hour they made 9.8million the hour later lol.. All about averages.

    7. Re:Hmm... by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Yeah, but don't discount the number of people who "impulse buy"...and if given time to think about it...they may decide they don't really need it.

      With a company doing the volume of business that Amazon is doing, I have to think that would be significant with that segment of the market alone?

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    8. Re:Hmm... by NewView · · Score: 2

      The logic behind how they arrived at that number is slightly flawed.

      I'd say they used RIAA & MPAA math.

    9. Re:Hmm... by MAXOMENOS · · Score: 1

      I'm in perfect agreement with this comment. Some lost sales are inevitable from this downtime, but the $4.9 million number is based on unwarranted assumptions.

      We'll know better what the impact is at their next quarterly statement (if they're honest)

      --
      Finding God in a Dog
    10. Re:Hmm... by sjames · · Score: 1

      On the other hand, some percentage of those impulse buys would have had enough buyer's remorse to cancel or return their order. That would have cost money to process.

    11. Re:Hmm... by girlintraining · · Score: 1

      Its totally silly of course, because Amazon often has the best prices, and people will simply wait. Nothing purchased on line constitutes an emergency to most people.

      Your definition of "emergency" and mine radically differ. I call it 'Tuesday' when there's five feet of fresh snow on the ground, over my house, my car, and I need to be to work in an hour. I'm more concerned about a broken coffee machine at work than some website going tits up for a few hours. Even if all the websites went tits up for a few hours, or days, it's not an emergency in my book. Emergency for me qualifies as "significant and immediate risk to life and safety," not "I can't order a copy of Call of Duty."

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    12. Re:Hmm... by icebike · · Score: 1

      Which is exactly why I said:

      Nothing purchased on line constitutes an emergency to most people.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    13. Re:Hmm... by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      Not enough superfluous zeroes for that to be true.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    14. Re:Hmm... by icebike · · Score: 1

      Technically, what I said is exactly what I said.
      (Nothing purchased on line) (constitutes an emergency).

      The verb was constitutes, not purchasing.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    15. Re:Hmm... by Chuckstar · · Score: 1

      Also, were all of Amazon's services down?

      The country-specific sites (e.g. Amazon.co.de)?
      Zappos.com?
      Audible.com?
      How about the cloud services (Amazon makes money on those, also)?

      Also, why should we believe Thursday afternoon at the end of January represents an average shopping hour for Amazon?

    16. Re:Hmm... by sdoca · · Score: 1

      Although your sentence may be interpreted the way you intended, I too intrepreted it to mean that "Purchasing nothing online constitutes an emergency to most people." It's a poorly worded sentence.

    17. Re:Hmm... by icebike · · Score: 1

      As soon as you stop parsing english as if it were math you'll be fine.

      The structure I used has been around for hundreds of years.
      Google the quoted phrase "nothing constitutes" to see hundreds of examples.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    18. Re:Hmm... by eWarz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I happen to be IT for a large (nowhere near as large as amazon, but big enough...) eCommerce site and I can tell you, people don't buy later. A lot of those sales disappear. Users try to buy it on amazon, if that doesn't work they hit up buy.com or newegg or some other site.

    19. Re:Hmm... by icebike · · Score: 1

      How the fuck could you POSSIBLY know this?

      Your site is down, you have no idea how many tried and went elsewhere.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    20. Re:Hmm... by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      But how many will just go somewhere else instead? i know that I frequently shop at Amazon, Tigerdirect, and Newegg and if one was down I'd just go to the next one, not like they all don't sell tech stuff.

      So while its true that some might come back later one of the nice things about doing your shopping on the web is that you aren't stuck doing your shopping in one place and i have a feeling that many would do just like me and go "oh well" and just go to the next site.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    21. Re:Hmm... by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      This. For me and mine, purchasing through a leviathan retailer like Solimoes gives a little bit of security in an insecure Networld. I am under the impression Amazon would make things right were I to be dissatisfied with a purchase, which has never happened when I order through them. And they have everything....it's like Willey's Store in Greenboro.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    22. Re:Hmm... by um...+Lucas · · Score: 1

      I was going to say the same, people merely placed there orders a couple hours later, not dropped the order altogether or decided to drop amazon altogether. Just a small glitch that won't even be noticed when their earnings come out. As pitiful as those earnings are, given the company's market cap

    23. Re:Hmm... by eWarz · · Score: 1

      Because we have tools like Google Analytics as well as hourly/daily/monthly revenue reports on a graph format. We know exactly WHO hits our site, when, where. Which days are the busiest, which are the slowest, etc. We even know your browser, screen resolution, OS, the color underwear you wear, etc.

    24. Re:Hmm... by eWarz · · Score: 1

      To build on that, lets say you get 250 orders ON AVERAGE per hour during the waking 14 or so hours of the day. some hours you might get 240, others you might get 260, but your minimum never falls below 200. Each order has a dollar average of $100. That's $20,000 minimum per hour. If you never drop below 200 orders for a given hour, it's safe to say you've lost at least $20,000/hour for each hour you are down. Furthermore, lets say your busy time is 5pm-7pm. Lets say during that time you average 500 orders/hour. downtime there could cost you close to 50 grand an hour. eCommerce traffic is far more predictable then you would imagine. While we never know which customers will buy, we do have a reasonable expectation of HOW MANY orders we'll get per hour and HOW MUCH we'll make per hour.

    25. Re:Hmm... by rubycodez · · Score: 1, Insightful

      you mean you are cluesless as to what those tools are really telling you. Amazon lost essentially zero, and yes most of the buyers came back later at their convenience.

    26. Re:Hmm... by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      It's a poorly worded sentence.

      No, English is simply a poorly designed language, if your definition of good design is a complete lack of ambiguity. A far superior language is the x86 instruction set which of course has been documented out the wazoo. So, please translate your sentence into opcodes for me... :)

    27. Re:Hmm... by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      You don't have those figures for the times that your site was down. And I doubt your noise floor is so low that you could pick up the customers who couldn't buy something during that one hour stopping back over the next few days.

      Suppose that they'd normally sell $5M/hr. They're down for 15 minutes - that is about $1.25M in lost sales. People come back over the next 48 hours to make their purchases - that is an increase in net sales over that period of $26k/hr - or 0.5%. Are you really going to notice whether your sales went up by 0.5% over the next two days?

      I doubt most purchases on Amazon are impulse buys. It isn't like a store where you can just walk out with something in your hands, and if you get buyer's remorse in an hour you can usually cancel without penalty anyway - again, the item isn't in your hands. When I buy most things on Amazon I'm comparing reviews and such - they're anything but impulse buys and if I settled on something 15 minutes of downtime isn't going to stand in the way of my placing an order.

    28. Re:Hmm... by harryjohnston · · Score: 1

      Indeed, Amazon should be able to use statistical methods to work out, within some reasonable margin of error, just what percentage of people did come back and which went to buy elsewhere. It would be interesting to see that figure, though I don't suppose they'll release it.

    29. Re:Hmm... by Genda · · Score: 1

      Or the folks who couldn't wait and went with eBay instead, or NewEgg or whatever. There are a dozen reasons why a one hour delay might have impacted whether a particular purchase happened or not. Still you wouldn't expect that to impact more than several percent, which if you think about it would still be a few hundred thousand dollars.

      One thing that might have had an even bigger impact, might be the fact that it would have impacted the ACTUAL cashflow today, even if the total sales is impacted only slightly there will still be a $5,000,000 hole on the day, and a day with a $5,000,000 hole on the last day of the month so the impact could have a significant FISCAL impact on the entire month. Accounting is one of those funny things and not knowing what Amazon's fiscal year or tax cycle looks like, having a $5,000,000 shortfall at the precise wrong moment could produce disproportionate harm. So, yes, the real impact is probably small, but there could be extenuating circumstances would amplify the impact of the event.

    30. Re:Hmm... by Seumas · · Score: 1

      Additionally, they make it seem like the half hour outage (which by the numbers in the blurb means about $2.5m) is so massive and detrimental to Amazon. If they really make $118m/yr, that's $43,000,000,000. So the outage would have cost them about six-ten-thousandths of a percent of revenue. Assuming that nobody who visited during the outage would ever come back and buy the item later. Which they obviously will, because *I* did, as soon as the site was back.

    31. Re:Hmm... by LiENUS · · Score: 1

      Eh I NEEDED a pata hard drive that I've no clue where I would have found one online, it was a sort of emergency I have until sunday to get it finished. Luckily for me I loaded up amazon right at the end of the outage, i got the error hit refresh, got it again hit slashdot saw nothing, tired refresh again and it worked so yay there. Fixing a computer for an accountant and with tax season starting up it was rather an emergency, however given that I have the whole weekend to finish the machine up I suppose not really.

    32. Re:Hmm... by kakaburra · · Score: 1

      You could also argue that given the amount of news this outage generated, more people visited the site and hence more impulse purchases.

    33. Re:Hmm... by havoc · · Score: 1

      Yep, I went to place an order while it was down. I noticed it was down, hit Slashdot to see if this was news or my local network, saw nothing, did a little work and then hit it 30 minutes later to place my order. Some orders will be permanently lost but that is normal for any business over the course of doing business.

    34. Re:Hmm... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      Yes, we know what GA does. Which of those metrics gives you insight into how many customers go elsewhere during downtime?

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    35. Re:Hmm... by kdemetter · · Score: 1

      The actual cost is hard to calculate :
      Most people don't 'stumble' upon Amazon : they go there for a reason. So they will wait until the site is back up.
      People who did accidentally stumble upon Amazon ( just googling for a product ) , will see a site that doesn't work, and ignore it, so that might be a lost purchase.

      However, I think the biggest cost might come from the knowledge that Amazon got hacked : even if hackers didn't get anywhere near the users' credit card information, most people won't understand that, and the idea alone will scare people away ( I'm sure the media coverage won't help either ).

      Luckily, people quickly forget, so the losses will only be short term.

      --
      Slipping shoelaces ?
    36. Re:Hmm... by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 1

      So, if a website is down, and someone goes to buy something, that means they are unable to purchase it later when the site is back up?

      The logic behind how they arrived at that number is slightly flawed.

      The logic initially applied to airline reservation systems (Sabre, etc.). Apparently, in that industry, if a customer is unable to book a flight on one system (with one alliance), many will then just book with a competitor, rather than waiting and trying again at a later time... Especially if they aren't doing this from the comfort of their home, but from a travel agent's office, and might have to come back there later to try again.

      With amazon, this seems rather unlikely. People like to comparison shop, and they'll go with the cheapest / most convenient, not necessarily with the one whose site is up at the spur of the moment.

    37. Re:Hmm... by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 1

      Or the folks who couldn't wait and went with eBay instead

      Couldn't wait and went with eBay? Haha...

      So you have to participate in an auction, wait until it is over (several days), and see your deal sniped away from you at the last minute while you're away. Ok, rinse, lathe, repeat.

      After 3 or more attempts (taking each a couple of days, due to the auction's durations), just pick a "buy now" offering that looks juicy.

      Unfortunately, the seller is an amateur who simply forgets to send the goods for two weeks. After reminder, he overnights it to you.

      But then, surprise, it's not the item that you bid on. After inquiry "o, sorry, I must have picked the wrong model designation from the selection list when I entered it into e-bay. Just send it back to me, and I'll see you get the right one". You do an then, "sorry, I'll be on a business trip the entire month, but you'll sure get it when I'll be back".

      O, and yes, the seller had excellent ratings... as a buyer (lesson learned: look closely about where ratings are coming from, don't just go by the summary count...).

      Better wait half a day until Amazon comes back up, pay a couple of Euros more, and get your stuff within the same week...

      E-bay is a lottery. You use it for stuff which you don't need urgently, and on which you can afford to be defrauded...

    38. Re:Hmm... by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 1

      Uhm... technically, what you said is, "Purchasing nothing online constitutes an emergency to most people."

      I scrolled back, and icebike did indeed say "Nothing purchased on line constitutes an emergency to most people" in his first post, rather than your version. That's the advantage of written media, you can scroll back to the original comment, and check what really was said.

      So what's your point of (literally...) twisting his words around? Yes, if you change word order, and replace past participium (purchased) with present participium (purchasing), then a sentence can be made to mean the opposite of what was intended. D'oh! In this case, it's not merely a matter of intonation or word grouping, but you actually had to change word order to change his meaning. So what's your point?

    39. Re:Hmm... by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 1

      Fixing a computer for an accountant and with tax season starting up it was rather an emergency

      If it really was just that much of an emergency, you'd have rushed out to town, paid 50% more, and got it immediately...

      however given that I have the whole weekend to finish the machine up I suppose not really

      indeed...

    40. Re:Hmm... by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 1

      We even know your browser, screen resolution, OS, the color underwear you wear,

      ... and then you wonder why people are so mistrusting of javascript...?

      (Technically, the browser and OS can be read from the user-agent header, and needs no javascript. But the screen resolution and color of underwear sure does need javascript!)

    41. Re:Hmm... by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 2
      Wouldn't it be a matter of looking at the averages for slightly longer periods? I.e. if the downtime was 1 day, just look at the volume of the week's starting with the down day for example. If this week had noticably less sales then any other week, he probably did lose sales (if people waited, they would probably have waited less than a week,). If the average was roughly the same, people would have delayed.

      Of course, all depends on how steady the volumes usually are. If there are usually large swings from one week to the next, he wouldn't be able to tell.

    42. Re:Hmm... by Internal+Modem · · Score: 1

      Ebay has several "Buy Now" products sold by vendors. Ebay is specifically trying to compete with Amazon. Several niche products are only available via Ebay "Buy Now" merchants.

      This isn't news to anyone but you, by the way.

    43. Re:Hmm... by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 1

      And that is going to help me how, exactly?

    44. Re:Hmm... by Internal+Modem · · Score: 1

      To understand your comment was wrong? Ebay is not simply about auctions anymore. They are trying to compete with Amazon. How could I be clearer?

    45. Re:Hmm... by Bramlet+Abercrombie · · Score: 1

      I think the biggest danger is that a customer might find a viable alternative to Amazon during the down time, and future sales become affected.

    46. Re:Hmm... by Skater · · Score: 1

      Are you referring to the seller stores that they've had for years? I don't get how they're really any different than the rest of ebay, aside from the buy-it-now versus auction format. If that is what you're referring to, they have the same problem - we don't trust ebay for the issues ArsenneLupin mentioned.

      Why would someone buy something off ebay that isn't an item that's no longer made or some cheap import (I bought some LEDs once that would fall into that category)? I'd never consider buying, say, a new camera from ebay; it's just not worth the risk, and even if the transaction goes smoothly, who knows whether the manufacturer will honor the warranty if something does go wrong later. Also, ebay all but forces you to use PayPal (for buying and selling) to annoy you even further - feeling like you're basically screwed if something goes wrong, because PayPal will probably do whatever is best for ebay - they are in no way a neutral party to the transaction. Meanwhile, they're laughing all the way to the bank - they get listing fees plus PayPal fees. What a racket.

      When I hand over cash (excuse me, use Paypal...) for something on ebay, I feel like I'm kissing my money goodbye and hoping the seller is legitimate because the recourse options are not pretty, and the way the feedback was set up, it was basically controlled by the seller (they may have changed this - I haven't paid close attention), so you could read them to get a warm fuzzy feeling but intellectually you knew they could mean absolutely nothing. They really need to work on their reputation if they want me to think of them as a reliable, honest vendor of general merchandise capable of competing with Amazon.

      I've bought a couple dozen things from ebay sellers over the years, mostly under $100, and although I've never had a problem, between them and PayPal I always worry things are going to go awry, and I'll be stuck fighting with PayPal and ebay over a ridiculous $40 transaction. And ebay/PayPal are probably happy with me feeling that way, because for merely $40 I'm probably not going to spend a bunch of time fighting it, and they'll come out winners.

      Meanwhile, if I buy something from Amazon or one of their partners or NewEgg or pretty much anyone else, and they try to screw me somehow, I at least have an independent third party involved - the credit card company, who has to follow the consumer protection laws. The ebay/Paypal thing removes that layer of protection. No, ebay would definitely not be my second thought if I saw Amazon was down.

    47. Re:Hmm... by Internal+Modem · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't consider buying many items from Ebay either. However, his main point (topic sentence) was that having to wait several days for the auction to end negated the chance that someone would shop on Ebay during Amazon's outage. That is not a valid point, since (as you point out) Ebay has had seller stores for years.

    48. Re:Hmm... by jadv · · Score: 1

      It's the same logic that allowed the MAFIAA to file a lawsuit claiming trillions of dollars' worth of damages!

    49. Re:Hmm... by bitt3n · · Score: 1

      So, if a website is down, and someone goes to buy something, that means they are unable to purchase it later when the site is back up?

      after I got the error message I just assumed Amazon had gone out of business. it's lucky I saw this article!

      --
      how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
    50. Re:Hmm... by icebike · · Score: 1

      If you are down, you have no metrics. Because, you are DOWN! So stop with this "oh I have numbers" nonsense. The customer that buys 10 minutes after you resumed operations, or 10 hours after is just as likely to be someone who tried earlier when you were down. You have no way of knowing, because your site was DOWN.

      Its a big enough impediment to set up another account, hand over your credit card to yet another web site, that I would wait an hour, maybe five, because I know Amazon will be back in short order, and I get free shipping, and they've never ripped me off.

      I'm NOT wandering off to some random site, just because of a short term outage. If I needed it quickly, I wouldn't be ordering on line in the first place. Its not at all like a brick and mortar store being closed after I drove have way across town, and another store is right next door. If I went somewhere to shop, I probably need it right away, and the cost of coming back is too high. The cost of checking Amazon an hour later is exactly ZERO.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    51. Re:Hmm... by LiENUS · · Score: 1

      If it really was just that much of an emergency, you'd have rushed out to town, paid 50% more, and got it immediately...

      Unfortunately I've no idea where I would even find one locally, quicker just to buy it on amazon with next day shipping than to hunt all over town for one.

    52. Re:Hmm... by LordWabbit2 · · Score: 1

      That's why it's called an estimate.

      --
      There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
  2. I'd hate to be... by programmerar · · Score: 1

    I'd hate to be the one developer responsible for that bug...

    --
    Waiting for you by the bridge
    1. Re:I'd hate to be... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The $5M figure assumes that 100% of the people that would have shopped at Amazon that hour purchased what they wanted elsewhere, rather than just trying back later, which I would bet a vast majority did.

    2. Re:I'd hate to be... by Enderandrew · · Score: 3, Informative

      Don't work. Jeff Bezos is known as a very understanding, forgiving and easy to work for boss.

      --
      http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
    3. Re:I'd hate to be... by eternaldoctorwho · · Score: 1

      Actually, it seems it was a DDoS, as admitted by the people claiming responsibility:

      we used a 7kbotnet running hoic 100 threads each. 80servers in botnet and a 16gbps booter

      (From the update link in the summary: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/01/31/amazoncom-website-offline/?test=latestnews)

    4. Re:I'd hate to be... by penix1 · · Score: 1

      And you want to tell me why again ISPs can't cut off botnet infected machines and warn the customers to clean their crap before allowing them back on the net? If ISPs really cared so much about their networks as they claim they do (the reason they give for usage caps and throttling) then you would think they would want to rid themselves of useless and destructive network chatter such as infected machines. You can't tell me they can't detect a machine sending thousands of page requests a second. You can't tell me they can't detect the command and control server connections.

      --
      This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
    5. Re:I'd hate to be... by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 1

      Because that 7k spread across all the different ISPs and providers represents about .0001% of each ones bandwidth. It would require far more effort and resources then you can possibly believe. Now some of the ISPs have DPI and could do it, but I'd rather they drop the DPI and just give internet access.

  3. Call the Waaaahmbulance? by Scarletdown · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds more like that was 5 million in potential dollars not earned, not 5 million lost. You can't lose what you do not yet have.

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    This space unintentionally left blank.
    1. Re:Call the Waaaahmbulance? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Tell that to the RIAA and MPAA

    2. Re:Call the Waaaahmbulance? by Anonymous+Psychopath · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sounds more like that was 5 million in potential dollars not earned, not 5 million lost. You can't lose what you do not yet have.

      I'm glad you aren't in charge of payroll.

      --

      Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

    3. Re:Call the Waaaahmbulance? by Scarletdown · · Score: 1

      You can't lose what you do not yet have.

      Unless you're the RIAA/MPAA

      Yeah, I thought that when posting originally, but figured that goes without saying. And when something goes without saying, I don't say it (unless I am dealing with the Knights Who Until Recently Say Nee, then I will say it.)

      --
      This space unintentionally left blank.
    4. Re:Call the Waaaahmbulance? by s.petry · · Score: 1

      Because a company pays people with speculative or borrowed money does not mean that they should pay them on speculative borrowed money. Many of the financial practices we see being used today were illegal in the past. Of those that were not, taking loans to pay people was not a practice by healthy companies. It was done in desperate times sure, but today people think your crazy if you don't borrow money to pay your employees. That is beyond baffling. Not only do you pay your employee wages and taxes, but you pay interest charges to do so? Even if you take those interest charges can be used for a small write off, it's additional expense. (The real reason it's done is to cook the books, not because it's financially responsible)

      To the person's point, did you read Amazon.com's latest earnings report showed that the company makes about $10.8 billion per quarter, or about $118 million per day and $4.9 million per hour."?

      An outage is not the same thing as a percentage of total revenue for a company. It's not logical to draw such a conclusion. First you have the obvious truth that Amazon makes money from sources other than the internet. The second is that they don't know how much connectivity was lost. It may have been gardener Bob ordering a packet of Sunflowers that could not get on to buy a 1.99 pack of seeds, and nobody else was impacted.

      Lastly, it draws a false conclusion that anyone attempting to buy something while the service was down never buys the product. That is absolute nonsense. If I try to buy a book from Amazon and I'm interrupted for any reason I don't abandon Amazon. I go later and buy what I needed. The majority of consumers delay a purchase, which means very little gets lost when a site goes down.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    5. Re:Call the Waaaahmbulance? by Scarletdown · · Score: 1

      To the person's point, did you read Amazon.com's latest earnings report showed that the company makes about $10.8 billion per quarter, or about $118 million per day and $4.9 million per hour."

      Another little point that may be of note here...

      If, when those quarterly reports come out it shows that Amazon had less than $10.8 billion in costs, then they made a profit and not a loss. Sure, it may have been 4.9 million less than expected, but is was still a profit and not a loss despite what the methods of Hollywood Accounting or Bistromathematics or whatever ethically challenged system they may use shows.

      --
      This space unintentionally left blank.
    6. Re:Call the Waaaahmbulance? by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      Ah, but your paycheck is money owed to you. That does not work the same way.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    7. Re:Call the Waaaahmbulance? by s.petry · · Score: 1

      yeah, I actually missed that until I saw it pointed out. Makes the "issue" even more of a non-issue as you look at the claim in detail.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    8. Re:Call the Waaaahmbulance? by mister2au · · Score: 1

      How does that logic hold?

      I lose my wallet in the street but because my income for the year is still net positive I didn't actually lose anything after all?

      Don't think so - a loss is a loss even is the long term impact is just less profit.

      Now - whether there was a $5M loss - that is a whole different question ;-)

    9. Re:Call the Waaaahmbulance? by Seumas · · Score: 1

      So what? How many of us are a corporation with 51,000 employees? You make it sound like this is one guy pulling in five million bucks an hour in his tiny little corner office where he ships out crap for Amazon.com via UPS.

  4. Assumptions... by Anubis350 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This assumes that amazon makes a constant amount every hour, as opposed to peak vs. off-peak business hours. This also assumes that the bulk of their business took their purchases elsewhere while Amazon was done, which I'm not inclined to believe is necessarily true.
    Amazon probably lost money, I'm in doubt that it's anywhere close to 5M

    --
    "goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
    1. Re:Assumptions... by dslauson · · Score: 1

      This also assumes that a person wanting to make a purchase on Amazon will not just wait an hour for Amazon to come back up, and will instead make the purchase elsewhere. In some cases that's probably true, but if it were me I'd probably just try again when Amazon came back up. I shop at Amazon out of laziness as much as anything else.

  5. ie, by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

    Chicken feed for Amazon.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  6. First Order Approximation by SillyHamster · · Score: 1

    Interesting statistic, though that assumes that a one hour wait is sufficient to make $5 million worth of sales redirect to a competitor. Amazon has some level of brand loyalty and reputation compared to others, and I'd bet that Amazon sales are not equally distributed throughout the day.

    I guess "Amazon might have suffered $5 million in losses" doesn't sound as interesting as claiming they actually did.

    1. Re:First Order Approximation by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 1

      Probably not $5M, but for example I bought a SSD the other day, I shopped a few sites, Amazon and Newegg were two with the best prices in particular. Newegg also had a slightly better deal on another product I wanted too, I bought the SSD and other product from them. If Amazon wasn't up I wouldn't even have had the chance to comparison shop, Online competition is fierce between the large retailers.

  7. Ahhh by delta98 · · Score: 1

    to have a Sears catolog again.I could call and just place an order to a live operator..sigh.

    1. Re:Ahhh by Applekid · · Score: 1

      to have a Sears catolog again.I could call and just place an order to a live operator..sigh.

      How long did you have to wait to talk to an operator? What if a bunch of modems automatically dialed their sales number and flooded their systems?

      --
      More Twoson than Cupertino
    2. Re:Ahhh by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      and to buy with januarys pricing in june... in todays world.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  8. oops by sribe · · Score: 1

    There went 2013's profit!

  9. Do you think... by tscheez · · Score: 3, Funny

    They'll just stay open an extra hour to make up for it???

    --
    Supplies!
  10. This also assumes another thing... by ChrisC1234 · · Score: 1

    This assumes that people who couldn't order something from Amazon right at that moment will immediately go order it somewhere else. I'd bet that most people would just try again later and order what they want.

  11. 404 Error? by dnahelicase · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe Amazon should consider moving to the cloud...

  12. Yawn. Just waited for later by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I was going to buy something during that period. I waited until Amazon came back, and bought it later. Problem solved. I'm not going to take my ecommerce business elsewhere because elsewhere doesn't have prime.

  13. Re:Not just Amazon.com webservers... by icebike · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Amazon has multiple data-centers.

    There is no one place where any specific service is hosted.
    For more then one of their offerings to be down from inside, and not from the outside, it might have been something like internal routers or switch gear, or perhaps an internal route advertising accident.

    --
    Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  14. Re:or maybe by Applekid · · Score: 5, Funny

    they didn't lose that much and people decided their spatula purchase could wait a few hours

    Amazon? Spatulas? Everyone knows to get your spatulas at Spatula City.

    --
    More Twoson than Cupertino
  15. Just the Front Page by koolguy442 · · Score: 1

    Just the front page was down, though. I was able to access various pages within, including product pages, but www.amazon.com itself was unavailable. Didn't try to buy anything, though.

  16. Re:But all I did was ... by CanHasDIY · · Score: 1

    one click and it broke. Just one damn click....................

    Signed,
    Grandma's everywhere

    Somewhere, hundreds of thousands of grandsons and daughters are receiving frantic phone calls informing them that the family matriarch has just broken the internets... Oh, excuse me a second, my celly's ringing...

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  17. "the company makes about 10.8 billion per quarter" by Swampash · · Score: 1

    In what universe?

    Here's Amazon's latest financial release:
    http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1779049&highlight=

    Here's the important bit:

    Net income decreased 45% to $97 million in the fourth quarter

    Amazon is barely breaking even. Whether or not this is an intentional strategy is another discussion, but it sure as hell ain't making 10.8 billion a quarter. It's not even making ONE HUNDREDTH of that.

  18. An hour relative by AwesomeMcgee · · Score: 1

    People need to quit looking at whole numbers and think about this in real terms.

    One hour. That's all, they lost business for one hour, they're still up for many thousands (maybe millions) of other hours incurring the revenues consistently.

    As for everyone who says "but it's so much money!" you're missing the point, absolutely no reasonable business anywhere is spending so much on just running their business that one hour of lost revenues is actually going to cause so much as a blip on their books.

    Think of it like this, if one day to another can fluctuate 5% just through pure randomness not even counting cyclicalness, their revenues fluctuate 1.2 hours worth at random. Do you think to any company 5% less business on one day is enough to stir any real bother? That's .7% of the business they do in one week.

    Suddenly losing one hour of business among the countless in uptime they've had doesn't seem like such a big deal, if you want to report "wow amazing amazon makes X hourly" great maybe it's interesting to somebody, but "amazing amazon was down for an hour and lost X" is just dumb because one hours loss doesn't mean anything in real terms to the business or it's shareholders.

    1. Re:An hour relative by Gertlex · · Score: 1

      People need to quit looking at whole numbers and think about this in real terms.

      Ok.

      One hour. That's all, they lost business for one hour, they're still up for many thousands (maybe millions) of other hours incurring the revenues consistently.

      Wut? Amazon hasn't been around for multiple centuries. If we're going to talk real terms, skip the hyperbole that results from vague statements :)

      Other than that, you're preaching to the choir, I'd say.

    2. Re:An hour relative by AwesomeMcgee · · Score: 1

      I said maybe millions because I didn't feel inclined to do the math to figure out what 5-10 years ranges in hours and took a wild ass stab heh, 5-10 years being my other wild-ass stab of guessing how long it's been since their last real outage having not followed. Wasn't trying to be hyperbolic, but since it turned out I was, maybe I can become a pundit or something, sweet!

  19. Hackers claim credit by new+death+barbie · · Score: 4, Funny

    Good luck with that. First you have to pack it up in the ORIGINAL packaging, then fill out a Return For Credit form, and then wait at least 10 days for processing...

    THEN maybe you can claim your credit.

    --

    It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.

    1. Re:Hackers claim credit by pbjones · · Score: 1

      I hope they do better than I did, the cost of return mail was worth more than the book, bah.

      --
      There was an unknown error in the submission.
    2. Re:Hackers claim credit by Kergan · · Score: 1

      Not to mention, adding to the funny aspect of the claim, the group deems itself as Nazis and got reported by Fox News.

      Conspiracy 101: people who believe in conspiracy theories are usually very, very, very, very, very thick people.

    3. Re:Hackers claim credit by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 1

      Usually, then again after reading about the money market manipulation scam posted on ./ yesterday, keeping an eye out for fraud and conspirators is a good idea.

  20. Re:"the company makes about 10.8 billion per quart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    That would be because they spent a bunch of money building new facilities for their "all shipping is overnight shipping" push.

    If you look at how much profit they made before investments in facilities, you'd realize they are "barely breaking even" in the same sense that buying saleable inventory makes you "broke".

  21. Re:or maybe by AshtangiMan · · Score: 1

    Try the spatula hut ... better deals and salespeople who really know their stuff.

  22. What a load of bull by dnaumov · · Score: 1

    "Amazon.com's latest earnings report showed that the company makes about $10.8 billion per quarter, or about $118 million per day and $4.9 million per hour."

    No they don't, Amazon makes barely any profit at all. They do have high (and growing) revenues though.

    1. Re:What a load of bull by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 1

      Net/Gross

      Amazon grosses close to $5M per hour. 'Makes' is a terrible term to use because it doesn't define if your making a profit or loss.

  23. Re:Nothing works flawlessly 100% of the time. by Gertlex · · Score: 1

    I dont see why this is even worth mentioning. Its a website, --

    No, no. The proper comparison is with the Amazon river. When was the last time the Amazon river stopped flowing?

    Round 23: Advantage: Amazon river.

  24. Re:Yes, that's what they said in the article. by gl4ss · · Score: 1

    it's just 49 minutes of the main gateway page of being down.
    friggin useless use of the botnet.

    now someone could come up with a calculation about how much it would cost to buy that amount of bots from amazons cloud.

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  25. Re:or maybe by Jstlook · · Score: 1

    Dude .. that's true, but have you checked out the hot chicks at spat-ooh-laa-laa world?!

    --
    ---jstlook ---For that is the way of Elves, for they say both yes AND no, and mean every word of it. --- J.R.R.T.
  26. Re:"the company makes about 10.8 billion per quart by rgbrenner · · Score: 1

    You're suggesting that amazon, with 20b in revenue last quarter, would have made 10b if they had not invested anything in equipment/facilities? A 50% profit margin?

    You can't be that stupid.

  27. Re:Not just Amazon.com webservers... by icebike · · Score: 1

    That's what I thought too.
    The story was updated while I was typing the post you replied to with a suggestion they were being flooded.

    But when you look at their total network capabilities, it just doesn't make sense.

    --
    Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  28. Because I know that when I want to buy by nedlohs · · Score: 1

    something and the web site I usually shop at is temporarily down rather than trying again later I go elsewhere or don't buy it at all.

    Oh shiny...

  29. Difference between 3.30 and 3.15 is one hour? by loufoque · · Score: 1

    Looks more like 15 minutes.

  30. update to the update by afgam28 · · Score: 2

    calling bs on the hackers who claimed responsibility.

    http://gizmodo.com/5980618/amazon-is-down

  31. Re:"the company makes about 10.8 billion per quart by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 1

    No, he's saying that if they didn't invest their net income would not have decreased 'for now', but that because they invested in their future that net incomes may be even larger in the future, risk of the unknown aside.

    Conversely you can't have been that stupid to miss what he said.

  32. Re:"the company makes about 10.8 billion per quart by rgbrenner · · Score: 1

    I see you are thread-challenged. maybe you should read the post he replied to first: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3424409&cid=42756337

  33. 5M sales, not profit by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 1

    It might have cost them $5M in sales, but their profit on that is less than 2%, or less than $100,000. And even that assumes all those sales are lost and not simply delayed.

  34. Re:or maybe by PieceOfShitAndroid · · Score: 2
    [Announcer:] There's just one place to go for all of your spatula needs
    [Random Voice #1:] Spatula City
    [Random Voice #2:] Spatula City

    [Announcer:]
    A giant warehouse of spatulas for every occasion.
    Thousands to choose from in every shape, size, and color.
    And because we eliminate the middle man, we can sell all our spatulas factory direct to you.
    Where do you go if you want to buy name brand spatulas at a fraction of retail cost?
    [Random Voice:] Spatula City
    [Random Voice:] Spatula City

    [Announcer:]
    And this weekend only, take advantage of our special liquidation sale.
    Buy nine spatulas, get the tenth one for just one penny.
    Don't forget, they make great Christmas presents.
    And what better way to say "I love you." than with the gift of a spatula?
    [Random Voice:] Spatula City
    [Random Voice:] Spatula City

    [Sy Greenblum:]
    Hello, this is Sy Greenblum, president of Spatula City.
    I liked their spatulas so much, I bought the company.

    [Announcer:]
    Spatula City - seven locations; we're in the yellow pages under "spatulas".

    [Neighbor:] My, where did you get that lovely spatula?
    [Singers:] Spatula City: We sell spatulas, and that's all.

  35. Re:or maybe by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 2

    Buy nine spatulas, get the tenth for just one penny!

  36. It makes complete sense by liquidweaver · · Score: 1

    They must use EC2.

    --
    mov ah, 4ch
    int 21h
  37. Classic journalism by tehcyder · · Score: 1
    First line of TFS: "Amazon.com, the multi-billion online retail website".

    Oh, right, THAT Amazon. Thanks for avoiding any potential confusion with...well, nobody.

    --
    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  38. Oblig: by nightfury · · Score: 1

    XKCD