Microsoft resolves global outage affecting 70+ countries

Microsoft confirmed Saturday that services were fully restored after a global outage lasting hours, which disrupted Microsoft 365 products including Outlook, Teams, and Copilot across more than 70 countries. The company attributed the incident to an issue during a network capacity upgrade following a recent network change, stating it was not related to cyberattacks or AI agents. Downdetector received reports from 74 countries and territories within an hour of problems emerging midday Thursday in the U.S. The outage affected governments, courts, healthcare, airlines, and banks worldwide, including in Japan, Singapore, and Britain, where a trial was halted and pharmacy prescriptions were delayed. Microsoft apologized Friday, while experts noted the event highlighted risks of overreliance on a single tech provider's infrastructure.