Actually, we wanted to write this week about the Digital Omnibus, which the Competition Commissioner is set to present tomorrow. This morning we built a new feature and wanted to test it with an LLM. But then we got the following message:
"500 Internal Server Error. Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed"
"Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed."
ChatGPT? Unreachable. PayPal? Also offline. Websites that actually document outages were themselves unreachable. The irony couldn't be greater.
What began this morning at 11:48 UTC developed within hours into one of the year's largest internet outages. Cloudflare reported "widespread 500 errors" and problems with dashboard and API. The impact was felt globally: Over 9,700 reports for X alone on Downdetector, before that site went offline too.
The parallel to July's CrowdStrike outage is unmistakable. Back then, a faulty update brought down approximately 8.5 million Windows systems and was called the largest outage in the history of information technology. Globally, 5,078 flights were cancelled. Air traffic came to a standstill.
Today, four months later, we're experiencing the same pattern: This time it's internet traffic that has been "grounded."
What both incidents ruthlessly expose: Our digital infrastructure stands on feet of clay. Graeme Stuart, a cybersecurity expert at Checkpoint, put it perfectly today: "Cloudflare going down today sits in the same pattern we saw with the recent AWS and Azure outages. These platforms are vast, efficient and used by almost every part of modern life."
The numbers speak for themselves:
When one of these giants stumbles, a significant portion of the internet falls with it.
While our competitors frantically called emergency meetings this morning and showered their customers with apologies, everything at Bchic ran as usual. The reason? A deliberate strategic decision: We host with Hetzner in Germany.
This decision might seem old-fashioned to some. No fancy CDN integration, no global edge network. But it also means: No dependency on Cloudflare, AWS, or other US giants.
Our customers could access their analytics dashboards today while others stared at Error 500 pages. Their data collection continued while competitors were offline. This isn't coincidence, it's the result of a conscious architecture decision.
The economic damage from such outages is immense. The CrowdStrike incident saw damages estimated at $5.4 billion for US Fortune 500 companies. Today it's too early for estimates, but when services like ChatGPT, PayPal, X, and countless business websites are offline for hours, we're talking billions in damages again.
Today's events should be a wake-up call. Yes, Cloudflare, AWS, and others offer fantastic services. They're fast, scalable, and often cost-effective. But they also create dangerous dependencies.
At Bchic, we've consciously chosen a different path:
This might be less "Silicon Valley," but it's reliable. And as today showed: Reliability is worth its weight in gold in the digital age.
If you also faced unreachable services this morning, it's time to reconsider your infrastructure strategy:
While tech giants struggled with their outages today, smaller, independent systems ran without disruption. This isn't an argument against innovation or modern technology. It's a plea for thoughtful, resilient architectures.
At Bchic, we'll continue to focus on independence and reliability. Because what good is the world's fastest CDN if it fails when you need it most?
Our customers felt the difference today. Their analytics kept running while others were left in the dark. That's not coincidence. That's strategy.
PS: The Digital Omnibus will have to wait. Sometimes reality writes better stories than any EU regulation.
About Bchic Analytics: We offer cookie-free, GDPR-compliant web analytics with hosting in Germany. No dependencies on US providers, no outages from global disruptions.
