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Why did major websites suddenly go dark and what does this widespread disruption reveal about the growing dependence on global content delivery networks and the vulnerability of essential online services during unexpected outages
Trading apps and search platforms were among the worst affected.
New Delhi: On Friday, a major service disruption caused multiple popular websites and apps to become inaccessible, affecting millions of users across sectors. Online trading platforms, search engines, financial services, news portals and creative tools were hit simultaneously. Users struggled to perform routine digital tasks as access gradually returned over the following hour.
Cloudflare was identified as the source of the outage, reporting problems with its dashboard and related application programming interfaces around 2:30 pm IST. During the disruption, users encountered failed requests, error messages and timeouts when attempting to access affected platforms. By 2:50 pm IST, Cloudflare confirmed that a fix had been implemented and monitoring was underway to ensure stability.
Among the most impacted platforms were trading apps Zerodha and Groww, information aggregator Perplexity, outage tracking site Downdetector and various news websites. Users attempting to access accounts, track market movements or retrieve financial data were temporarily blocked.
Other widely used services such as Zoom, Shopify, Claude, Canva, LinkedIn and HDFC Bank also experienced varying degrees of downtime. While some platforms went completely offline, others displayed slow load times or limited functionality.
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In an unusual turn, Downdetector itself went offline during the incident, preventing users from verifying the scale of the outage in real time. Once the service returned, it revealed significant spikes in complaints, highlighting the wide-ranging impact across different sectors.
The outage caused significant disruption for multiple user groups. Traders on Zerodha and Groww faced heightened stress as they were unable to access accounts during active trading hours. Professionals relying on Zoom, Canva and cloud-based collaboration tools experienced delays or interruptions in work. Casual users attempting to access news, search engines or fact-checking tools were similarly affected. The simultaneous unavailability of multiple platforms exposed how dependent users have become on Cloudflare’s infrastructure, which usually operates behind the scenes.
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This is not the first time Cloudflare has faced outages. A similar disruption last month and another coinciding with Amazon Web Services issues in October caused short-term interruptions for platforms such as X and ChatGPT. Cloudflare’s content delivery network, which distributes requests across servers to improve speed and security, is critical to the functioning of many digital services. Repeated incidents highlight potential vulnerabilities in global web infrastructure.
