Bet365, League of Legends, Sage, YouTube and Google were among those taken offline as provider tried to fix problem
Cloudflare outage causes error messages across the internet
The internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare suffered an outage on Tuesday, making many websites inaccessible for about three hours.
Cloudflare is a global cloud services and cybersecurity firm. It provides datacentres, website and email security, protection from data loss and defences against cyber threats, among other things. It describes itself as providing an “immune system for the internet”, with technology that sits between its clients and the wider world that blocks billions of cyber threats daily. It also uses its global infrastructure to speed up internet traffic. It makes more than $500m (£440m) a quarter from nearly 300,000 customers operating in 125 countries, including China.
It is one of several companies that together form key elements of the nervous system of the internet – and so when its services fail, websites can effectively go offline, affecting millions of people and companies. ChatGPT and Elon Musk’s X social media platform were among the sites that appeared to be affected by Tuesday’s outage. By one estimate, Cloudflare provides services to one in five of the world’s websites.
