The Microsoft Outage Is a Warning for the World

Heba Habib, Al Jazeera: Microsoft says it has had only “marginal success” in restoring its most widely used workplace services, more than 12 hours after a global outage knocked out Outlook and disrupted Teams and Copilot for users in 74 countries. This is among the best of the explainers I have found, but it has two problems in common with the others. The first is that it relies on Downdetector for key information, including the “74 countries” figure. But that is not first-party information provided by either Microsoft or internet infrastructure providers; it is sourced from user reports. Habib at least clarifies this later in the article, which many others did not. The other problem is its speculation about the role recent buyouts and layoffs may have played, accompanied by a shift toward A.I.-based development under questionable management. It would make sense for some or all of these changes to have been a factor but it is quite early to speculate. Microsoft has not even removed…

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