Microsoft and DuckDuckGo Services Experience Worldwide Disruptions

Microsoft outage, which is worldwide, began early on the 25th of May, 2024. This affected sites powered by Microsoft Corps and Bing search.

Errors will be displayed to searchers using Bing and other websites that rely on Bing Search. These include Copilot for the web, Copilot on Windows, OpenAI’s ChatGPT internet search, and DuckDuckGo Inc.

Microsoft released a statement explaining their efforts in isolating and solving the issue.

We're investigating an issue where users may be unable to access the Microsoft Copilot service. We're working to isolate the cause of the issue. More information can be found in the admin center under CP795190.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) May 23, 2024

Microsoft Outage Affects Only Users In Asia and Europe

The Bing status page, which is meant to display the current status of the Bing search engine and its related services, returned the same error.

Copilot, the artificial intelligence chatbot build into Bing, was also down. The copilot.microsoft.comwebsite was also inaccessible shortly after 10am SAST. ChatGPT, on which Copilot is based, was accessible.

Microsoft’s Azure status page, which shows issues impacting its Azure data center infrastructure, was available but said there were “currently no active events”.

Also Read: Google Takes on Microsoft: Workspace vs. Office

However, the outage appears to have primarily affected users in Asia and Europe, throwing up 429 HTTP code errors.

Microsoft said in a Friday status update: “Services have now resumed. Our efforts to understand the root cause of the issue are ongoing.” It should be noted that broader Microsoft Azure services were not impacted by the outage.

Microsoft Outage Partially Resolved

Downdetector.com, a website that monitors website outages, reported a spike in complaints about Bing starting at around 7.30am SAST on Thursday. Downdetector also showed a spike in user complaints about DuckDuckGo, which is reliant on Microsoft services.

Some reports have suggested the problem could be related to the Bing API, or application programming interface, which is used by DuckDuckGo and other services.

However, services appeared to be returning at around 10.30 am SAST, with the Bing website seemingly fully operational again.

Nevertheless, DuckDuckGo was still experiencing problems delivering search results as of 2.30 pm SAST. The Microsoft Copilot website was also still inaccessible.

Interact with us via our social media platforms:

Facebook: Silicon Africa.
Instagram: Siliconafricatech.
Twitter: @siliconafrite