A major technical outage has disrupted Yahoo and AOL services worldwide, leaving millions of users unable to access their email accounts and websites. The widespread service failure began early Wednesday, January 21, with user reports surging around 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
Affected users reported encountering an error message stating, “Edge: Too many requests,” pointing to a possible backend server or network infrastructure failure. The issue appears to be impacting multiple services simultaneously, with Yahoo Mail and AOL Mail among the hardest hit.
Outage-tracking website Downdetector recorded a sharp spike in complaints shortly after the problem began. By 10:12 a.m. ET, more than 17,000 outage reports had been logged for Yahoo services alone, including over 8,000 related specifically to Yahoo Mail. AOL services were also severely affected, with more than 4,700 reports submitted by users experiencing access issues.
As of the latest updates, neither Yahoo nor AOL has issued an official statement explaining the cause of the outage or providing an estimated timeline for service restoration. Some users have received automated responses requesting details through direct messages, but no comprehensive clarification has been offered.
The outage has caused widespread frustration among individuals and businesses that rely on Yahoo and AOL for communication and daily operations. Users have been advised to monitor the companies’ official channels for updates and wait for services to be restored.
This incident follows a series of recent high-profile internet outages that affected major platforms, including X (formerly Twitter) and Cloudflare, which disrupted online services and businesses globally.
Technology experts note that large-scale outages of this nature often stem from backend server overloads, configuration errors, or network failures, though confirmation from the companies is still pending.
As users await official updates, the outage highlights the continued vulnerability of even long-established digital platforms to infrastructure-related disruptions.
