Outages Continue

Mockery for Microsoft: “Switched to carrier pigeons”

Many businesses are currently “paralyzed” by the problems at Microsoft.(Bild: AFP/SCOTT OLSON)

While Microsoft technicians are working feverishly to resolve the issues with accessing Office 365 services, frustration and financial losses are mounting among affected companies worldwide, some of which have been brought to a standstill. However, some employees are actually taking a positive view of the situation and are already looking forward to a “long weekend.”

Around the world, many companies and consumers are cut off from the software giant’s core cloud services. The outage has affected not only the Outlook email service but also services across the Microsoft 365 cloud suite in general. With the Teams collaboration tool, for example, scheduling meetings and calendar integrations were not working properly.

Attempts to resolve the issue have so far been unsuccessful
In addition, the AI assistant Copilot, the management portal for administrators, and interfaces to third-party providers were intermittently disrupted. These included AI services such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Microsoft documented its persistent struggle against the outages—which has so far failed to yield significant success—through announcements on the online platform X and on its service status page.

Communication problems at airlines
The impact was far-reaching across the economy. In some companies, critical business processes came to a standstill; airlines had to switch their customer communication channels; banks resorted to alternative systems; and in Australia, there were even issues with medical treatments and supply chains.

A business owner in the Australian city of Adelaide was unable to process invoices or access his accounting software due to the Microsoft Authenticator outage. He complained that thousands of dollars were lost because orders weren’t coming in and invoices couldn’t be sent. Schools had to partially suspend classes; distance learning institutions were affected; and students lost access to learning materials during their final exams. According to the Australian TV network ABC, some small businesses had to absorb daily losses of up to 30,000 Australian dollars (approx. 18,000 euros).

Some employees are hoping for longer outages
As the saying goes, one man’s misfortune is another’s joy. Alongside mockery and schadenfreude online, many affected users on social media are expressing the hope that the problems will persist even longer, thereby giving them a “long weekend.” The mockery from a user named Nick Jacobs was particularly vivid (see X-post below). Since Microsoft Outlook no longer works, he has now switched to carrier pigeons. His message to colleagues: “I hope you find this pigeon and the attached PDF in good health.” In a reply, one follower remarked that he was still waiting for the update for “Pigeon Version 18.6.2.”

“Is it officially okay to go home?”
Comparisons to an unexpected snow day are also making the rounds. A U.S. lawyer described the situation on Bluesky as a sort of “snow day for adults.” Several internet users called for “Microsoft 365” to be renamed “Microsoft 364,” since users were losing a day of productivity. Elsewhere, the outage was taken as an opportunity to question the workday itself. “If Outlook isn’t back up and running within 30 minutes, can we officially go home?” one user asked jokingly. Another simply told all employees who rely on email for work to call it a day.

Even companies took the opportunity to take a jab. The official X account of the fast-food chain Wendy’s posted a mocking comment linking the Microsoft outage to the headlines at the time about Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Other memes poked fun at Microsoft’s aggressive AI push, depicting developers who supposedly can no longer make sense of the Outlook code without artificial intelligence.