Microsoft feel really bad about the Outlook outage and 365 services crash that brought many business communications and personal email around the globe to a screeching halt this week.
“We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused you and your business,” the Redford, WA-based software company late Friday morning as email and other Microsoft 355 programs started working again, some more sporadically than others.
Just before noon PT, another update from the company scaled back expectations of when everyone would be able to use their usually much used products. “As infrastructure stabilizes, we’re still draining queued messages and rebalancing traffic, so customers may see improved sign-in/access while delivery and processing continue to catch up, Microsoft said. “We do not have an ETA for full recovery yet. Service access can recover before mail flow fully normalizes.”
Watch on Deadline
The November 12 blackout of sorts shuttered business, and squeezed courts, hospitals, law enforcement and schools on what some cheekily termed an adult snow day on. With repairs continuing, Microsoft earlier today provided a bit more insight into what went so wrong and how the conspiracy theories were wrong.
Emphasis on Microsoft offering just a bit of info on what sparked the meltdown
“This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents,” the Bill Gates and Paul Allen-founded company stated on its update page on Friday. “The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change,” Microsoft added, keeping its outage cards close the chest. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions.”
As the outage spread like digital wildfire and saw the heavily subscribed email system sputter, freeze or just totally crap out, internet chatter and Gmail exchanges saw many pointing the finger at either a rogue AI attack. As my colleague Dade Hayes noted earlier today: “Other theories sought to connect the outage to the day’s other momentous tech news: the ouster of Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. Huang was forced to resign after admitting to an affair with a suspected Chinese spy and amid reports of affairs with executives at his own company.”
Geopolitical espionage and AI chip intrigue aside, there was even those who sought to blame the Outlook outage due to the online toggling and slowing occurring around the world due to the millions downloading the over 100GB Grand Theft Auto VI ahead of the November 19 launch of the megagame.
To that, Microsoft ended its latest update today with a “We will provide a full post-incident report once our review is complete.” No timeline was given as to when that review will be complete.
Microsoft’s problems started around 10 a.m. PT on November 12, with the Outlook email collapse. Over the hours, users on several continents reported being unable to connect with other 365 products like Teams, Azure, Word, OneDrive, Copilot and more
The disruption exposed reliance on digital systems, but had little effect on Microsoft’s stock. The stock rose over $1 from Thursday to currently trading at a healthy $524.26 ahead of the market’s Friday close in a couple of hours.
