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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."

26 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 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.

    10. 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.
    11. 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.

  2. 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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    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: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.

  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
  5. 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.
  6. Do you think... by tscheez · · Score: 3, Funny

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

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    Supplies!
  7. 404 Error? by dnahelicase · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe Amazon should consider moving to the cloud...

  8. 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.
  9. 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
  10. 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.

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

    calling bs on the hackers who claimed responsibility.

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

  12. 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.

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

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