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Microsoft Outlook, Teams and AI Copilot were hit by a massive outage that upended workplaces around the world and stretched into a second day Friday. Naturally, the internet had a field day.
As email and workplace messaging problems persisted, users shared memes celebrating an unexpected break, and cheekily urging Microsoft to “take its time” in restoring access.
Others made a punchline out of the tech giant, dubbing it “Microsoft364” and picturing its engineers bungling attempts to bring services back online.
Behind the jokes was a disruption affecting hospitals, airports, schools and government offices from Washington to London to Tokyo. The reach of the outage reflected the ubiquity of Microsoft’s workplace tools — which have nearly 500 million users — and the fragile infrastructure undergirding the modern economy.
In a Friday update, nearly one day after the outage began, Microsoft said it was “continuing to see improvements in service availability,” though “some users may still experience intermittent access issues.”
The general feeling among many internet commenters — who appeared to rely on Microsoft services for their jobs — was one of unbridled euphoria.
One X user captured the mood with a clip from The Whale, in which the main character smiles, levitates and…
