Granted, the outage was a setback for Amazon. I wonder how businesses are faring near Rome, Maine, where 850,000 residents have been without power after several days of record ice storms along the Canadian border. You get the idea. There is a reason that the Net is described in highway metaphors. It is a pathway for transactions, whether it be communications, distribution, or commerce.
Roads are vulnerable to things like ice storms.
They're also susceptible to congestion, deterioration, and the occasional gawker who slows things down for everyone else. A car accident delayed eastbound traffic on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge for nearly two hours Friday night, undoubtedly cutting into business for restaurants, movie theaters, nightclubs, and shopping malls hoping to start their weekend sales, yet that hardly qualified as national news. By contrast, when storms freeze citrus crops in Florida, the price of oranges usually rises at the supermarket. So do paper prices when the lumber industry runs into problems, driving up the cost of newsprint used to publish the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers. The possibility of disaster striking the Internet has proven as likely as any other catastrophic event.