What is Cloudflare – and why did its outage take down so many websites?
The internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare suffered an outage on Tuesday, making many websites inaccessible for about three hours.Cloudflare is a global cloud services and cybersecurity firm.It provides datacentres, website and email security, protection from data loss and defences against cyber threats, among other things.It describes itself as providing an “immune system for the internet”, with technology that sits between its clients and the wider world that blocks billions of cyber threats daily.It also uses its global infrastructure to speed up internet traffic.
It makes more than $500m (£440m) a quarter from nearly 300,000 customers operating in 125 countries, including China.It is one of several companies that together form key elements of the nervous system of the internet – and so when its services fail, websites can effectively go offline, affecting millions of people and companies.ChatGPT and Elon Musk’s X social media platform were among the sites that appeared to be affected by Tuesday’s outage.By one estimate, Cloudflare provides services to one in five of the world’s websites.Users of several heavy-traffic websites reported that they went offline at the same time as the Cloudflare outage.
They include the gambling website Bet365, the multiplayer battle game League of Legends and the accounting and payroll company Sage, as well as YouTube and Google, according to Downdetector, a website measuring reports of outages.Cloudflare called it an “internal service degradation”.It took just under three hours from announcing it was investigating the problem to declaring a fix had been implemented, and the incident had been resolved at 2.42pm UK time.There may have been a specific link to services in London, as it said that it had to disable an encryption service in the UK capital during its attempts at remediation.
It said there had been an unusual spike in traffic to one of Cloudflare’s services beginning at 11.20am but it did not yet know the cause of it.With much of the world’s economy reliant on the internet – from banking to e-commerce – some experts in cyber-resilience warn that its infrastructure has become too reliant on a few big companies, creating a “dependency chain”.The problems at Cloudflare come less than a month after outages at other cloud services operators, Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure.Together with Google Cloud, these three providers account for about two-thirds of the infrastructure underlying the digital world.
Experts argue it shows there should be greater diversity in supply of internet services.
Ocado shares fall 17% after US partner announces warehouse closures
The value of online grocer Ocado has fallen sharply after Kroger, its major partner in the US, announced the closure of three warehouses using the UK company’s high-tech equipment.Ocado signed a deal to build 20 automated warehouses – known as customer fulfilment centres – for Kroger, the US’s fourth largest retailer, in 2018. Eight of those facilities are currently operating with two more planned for next year. The deal was seen as a major part of Ocado’s plan to sell its online grocery delivery technology internationally.However, on Tuesday, Kroger said sites in Frederick in Maryland, Pleasant Prairie in Wisconsin, and Groveland in Florida would close in January
‘No contract, no coffee’: what to know about the Starbucks workers’ strike in over 40 US cities
Unionized Starbucks workers are threatening to expand a US strike against the world’s biggest coffee chain into “the largest and longest” in the company’s history – and urging customers to steer clear.Starbucks has said the vast majority of its cafes remain open, and expressed disappointment that Starbucks Workers United launched the strike.Negotiations over the ever first union contract for Starbucks workers in the US broke down in recent months. Both sides have blamed the other.Prominent politicians including Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor-elect, have backed the striking workers
Nvidia earnings: Wall Street sighs with relief after AI wave doesn’t crash
Markets expectations around Wednesday’s quarterly earnings report by the most valuable publicly traded company in the world had risen to a fever pitch. Anxiety over billions in investment in artificial intelligence pervaded, in part because the US has been starved of reliable economic data by the recent government shutdown.Investors hoped that both questions would be in part answered by Nvidia’s earnings and by a jobs report due on Thursday morning.“This is a ‘So goes Nvidia, so goes the market’ kind of report,” Scott Martin, chief investment officer at Kingsview Wealth Management, told Bloomberg in a concise summary of market sentiment.The prospect of a market mood swing had built in advance of the earnings call, with options markets anticipating Nvidia’s shares could move 6%, or $280bn in value, up or down
‘We excel at every phase of AI’: Nvidia CEO quells Wall Street fears of AI bubble amid market selloff
Nvidia shares are rising in after-market trading after the company posted third-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street estimates. All eyes were on Nvidia, the bellwether for the AI industry and the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, as analysts and investors hoped the chipmaker’s third-quarter earnings would assuage concerns about whether the high-flying valuations of AI firms have peaked.Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvida, opened the earnings call with an attempt to dispel those concerns. In sum, Huang said, there’s a major transformation happening in AI and Nvidia is foundational to that transformation.“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” said Huang
Wimbledon’s expansion plans heading for court of appeal after judge’s ruling
Wimbledon’s battle to build 39 new grass courts on a nearby golf course has taken a fresh twist after local residents were granted permission to take a judicial review case to the court of appeal.Last year the All England Club (AELTC) was given approval by Jules Pipe, the London deputy mayor for planning and regeneration, to build the courts on what used to be Wimbledon Park Golf Club – a decision that was then endorsed in the high court on 21 July. However, the Save Wimbledon Park pressure group challenged that verdict and on Monday it was announced that Lord Justice Holgate had granted a judicial review of the court’s decision.Explaining the reasons for granting the order, Holgate wrote that: “The grounds of appeal are arguable with a real prospect of success. The case law on scheme benefits, deliverability, relevance, material considerations and irrationality merits review
From the first ball to Bazball: everything you need to know about the Ashes
Can Ben Stokes really lead England to victory in Australia? Set your alarms and gird your loins, this one’s not just big, it’s positively BrobdingnagianEither it’s the start of the 2025-26 Ashes or Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam on BBC Four is more watchable than we realised.England’s coach, the New Zealander Brendon McCullum, whose vibe is usually somewhere between Gen X slacker and Buddhist hippy, has called it “the biggest series of all our lives”. It could be career-defining for England – and career-staining for a great Australia side. All Ashes series are big; this one is positively Brobdingnagian.Well, England’s record on the last three tours is W0 D2 L13
TikTok to give users power to reduce amount of AI content on their feeds
Meta wins major US antitrust case and won’t have to break off WhatsApp or Instagram
What is Cloudflare – and why did its outage take down so many websites?
Cloudflare says ‘incident now resolved’ after outage causes error messages across the internet – as it happened
Cloudflare outage causes error messages across the internet
Amazon vs Perplexity: the AI agent war has arrived