Who's "we" and why would they worry? I'm struggling to think of a side-effect of AWS going down that would worry me more than being unable to get a Lyft (which itself doesn't worry me very much).

Maybe a few here would cause some concern. Also note that not all companies/governments using AWS just let everybody know that they are, so they aren't listed and you can only know when the service goes offline.

> Adobe, Airbnb, Alcatel-Lucent, AOL, Acquia, AdRoll, AEG, Alert Logic, Autodesk, Bitdefender, BMW, British Gas, Canon, Capital One, Channel 4, Chef, Citrix, Coinbase, Comcast, Coursera, Docker, Dow Jones, European Space Agency, Financial Times, FINRA, General Electric, GoSquared, Guardian News & Media, Harvard Medical School, Hearst Corporation, Hitachi, HTC, IMDb, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, International Civil Aviation Organization, ITV, iZettle, Johnson & Johnson, JustGiving, JWT, Kaplan, Kellogg’s, Lamborghini, Lonely Planet, Lyft, Made.com, McDonalds, NASA, NASDAQ OMX, National Rail Enquiries, National Trust, Netflix, News International, News UK, Nokia, Nordstrom, Novartis, Pfizer, Philips, Pinterest, Quantas, Sage, Samsung, SAP, Schneider Electric, Scribd, Securitas Direct, Siemens, Slack, Sony, SoundCloud, Spotify, Square Enix, Tata Motors, The Weather Company, Ticketmaster, Time Inc., Trainline, Ubisoft, UCAS, Unilever, US Department of State, USDA Food and Nutrition Service, UK Ministry of Justice, Vodafone Italy, WeTransfer, WIX, Xiaomi, Yelp, Zynga [1].

[1] https://www.contino.io/insights/whos-using-aws

Additional Info: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/03/when-amazon-web-servi...

That's a useless list. To take the one example I happen to work for, yes NASA uses AWS, but not for anything terribly important. Without any evidence that one of the handful of groups on that list that have safety-critical infrastructure are running that infrastructure solely on AWS, I maintain my position that Lyft going offline would be a greater inconvenience to me.

Yes, mostly useless. As I stated, and I'm sure you'd probably concur, most companies and governments don't go listing their tech stacks (especially critical tech stacks) for the world to see. That in itself can be a big security issue. For instance, AWS isn't allowed to mention, list or use the name of one of the companies I do work for.

I take it you don't use the bank listed. That's fine. Does your bank do transactions with them? Other banks? Other institutions/stores? Do you use NASDAQ? Do others? Since everything is so interconnected, it doesn't take much for one of those services to immediately or eventually affect a bunch of others. It might be relatively trivial if AWS goes down for a few hours, but what about a longer duration and the avalanche effect? Is that impossible?

You also changed the goalpost a bit from "worry me more than being unable to get a Lyft," which is the comment I responded to, to "safety-critical infrastructure." I can't give examples of that because no one in their right mind would list that anywhere.

Europe tried having a Telia route throw away Amazon traffic a few years ago. The Internet basically stops working if AWS is down.