Microsoft outage disrupts search engines, AI tools
Extended beyond Microsoft's own products
Microsoft faced a service outage on Thursday, leaving many users in Asia and Europe frustrated as Bing Search became inaccessible.
The outage, which began around 3 am Eastern Time, impacted Bing, the company's search engine, as well as Microsoft's AI-powered tools like Copilot and the DALL-E image creation service.
Users attempting to access Bing.com homepage were met with either a blank page or an error message. However, searching directly through Bing's URL remained functional, suggesting the issue was isolated to the homepage.
The outage reportedly stemmed from issues with Bing's API.
Microsoft's Copilot service was completely unavailable across all platforms, including the web app and mobile app. Users attempting to use Copilot were stuck in a frustrating loop, seeing a loading screen followed by an error message stating they were unable to connect to the service.
The outage extended beyond Microsoft's own products. Search engines like DuckDuckGo and Ecosia and ChatGPT's internet search functionality were also affected due to their reliance on Microsoft's Bing API.
Users trying to search on DuckDuckGo encountered an error message stating, "There was an error displaying the search results. Please try again."
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, confirmed the issue on their support page, indicating a partial outage impacting web browsing capabilities due to Bing's unavailability.
Microsoft initially confirmed the Copilot service disruption and stated they were investigating the cause.
Subsequent updates indicated the company was working to isolate the root cause and redirect traffic to alternative components to restore service as quickly as possible.
The services began coming back online after more than five hours of interruption.
DuckDuckGo reported recovery around 10:30 am Eastern Time, followed by a Microsoft update on their 365 Status account.
Microsoft said its telemetry showed signs of recovery, assuring users they were actively investigating the underlying issue and would take further action if necessary.
The incident highlights the potential for cascading effects when outages occur within critical infrastructure like Bing's API.
And this is not the first time that Microsoft has suffered a major service interruption.
In January last year, the company experienced an issue that prevented thousands of users worldwide from using its services, including Teams and Outlook. As a result of the outage, users on Microsoft Teams were unable to send and receive messages, join calls or use other features of the Team app, forcing office employees to revert to in-person meetings or connect through other alternative platforms.
Then, in June, Microsoft suffered another service disruption taking down services like Teams and Sharepoint Online.
Microsoft attributed the outage to DDoS attacks that hit Azure, Outlook and OneDrive over the course of three days.