AWS outage: Are we relying too much on US big tech?

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on Monday made global headlines after knocking some of the world's largest sites offline for hours.

For users, the impacts ranged from the serious - such as not being able to access vital banking, government or work services - to the not-so-serious, such as fears of losing long built-up streaks on Duolingo.

But the outage has also reignited the debate around whether countries, including the UK, are over-dependent on a handful of US tech firms.

Should we worry that an issue occurring at the heart of Amazon's cloud computing operations in Virginia badly affected UK firms and services such as Lloyds Bank and HMRC - and what, if anything, can we do about it?

Amazon has embedded itself within the very fabric of cloud-based computing, the infrastructure that underpins the delivery of the IT systems which are so much a part of all our lives.