Microsoft has extended its email timeout by 48 hours following a major outage that impacted Outlook, Teams, and its AI assistant Copilot. The disruption began recently and incapacitated services for the tech giant's 430 million users. By extending the timeout, the company hopes to allow delayed emails to catch up as systems slowly undergo restoration.
In early statements regarding the incident, Microsoft reported that an elevated load within its infrastructure caused the disruption, adding that there was no evidence of malicious activity. The company noted that a core process on affected servers became overwhelmed, leading to capacity loss, which prompted teams to isolate portions of the infrastructure to validate potential recovery.
Microsoft's latest updates indicate continued recovery progress across affected regions. Broader improvements have been observed in North America and much of Europe, alongside encouraging recovery signals in the Asia Pacific region. While some users may continue to experience intermittent issues, the company remains focused on recovery efforts for remaining affected environments while prioritizing email queue and backlog reduction.
The tech sector outage arrived amid a wider turbulent period for technology and financial markets. Recently, Nvidia experienced leadership changes following the resignation of its former CEO, Jensen Huang, which coincided with a 15% decline in Nvidia's stock over a five-day period and a dip in Bitcoin to $68,000. Additionally, recent weeks have seen service disruptions impact Japanese credit unions as well as UK and Australian banks, though these incidents were likewise not attributed to malicious activity.
