Amazon Lost $120K a Minute During Outage

Cause isn't certain

By Matt Cantor, Newser Staff

Posted Aug 20, 2013 8:15 AM CDT

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Amazon Lost $120K a Minute During Outage — In this Oct. 18, 2010 file photo, an Amazon.com package is prepared for shipment by a United Parcel Service driver in Palo Alto, Calif. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

Amazon was down for as long as 45 minutes in the US and Canada yesterday, VentureBeat reports, and while the cause isn't clear, the company certainly lost a lot of money while it was offline. Reports differ on how long the site was down (Reuters says 15 minutes; GigaOm says about 45). Geekwire puts the outage at 40 minutes, and figures that Amazon missed out on a whopping $4.8 million in sales, based on $15.7 billion in revenue last quarter—or $120,000 per minute. That's roughly in line with what Google's outage on Friday cost it, VentureBeat notes: some $545,000 in ad revenue in about five minutes. (Read more Amazon stories.)