Microsoft restores Outlook and Teams after global outage hits businesses and governments

Microsoft restored service to Outlook and Teams on Friday after a historic outage disrupted businesses and governments worldwide, with the company attributing the incident to server issues and ruling out malicious activity. The outage, which began around 12:25 p.m. ET on Thursday, affected features tied to Exchange Online, impacting government agencies in Australia, Japan, and the US, causing trading delays, hindering earnings publications, and prompting airlines to warn of communication lags. Downdetector logged over 7.4 million reports, peaking at nearly 20,000 per minute. This is Microsoft's second major disruption this year, following outages in January and October, raising concerns about reliance on a few tech providers. Estimated global insured losses are between $300 million and $500 million, with some analysts questioning if recurring reliability issues could push customers to rivals despite high switching costs.