Microsoft malfunction...panic in many companies and government institutions around the world and employees posting sarcastic videos

Microsoft announced that it is making gradual progress in its efforts to address the widespread outage that affected its services. The company wrote on the

The flaw caused countless companies and consumers around the world to be cut off from central cloud services. Microsoft announced today, Friday (November 13, 2026), that it is making gradual progress in its efforts to address the widespread disruption that affected its services.

Microsoft's cloud services: Outlook, Teams, and CoPilot continued to be interrupted, with one of the company's worst outages extending for more than 12 hours, disrupting communications for companies and governments around the world.

Microsoft said that problems with the servers caused the malfunction, stressing that it does not have information indicating the presence of any malicious electronic activity behind it. It said in its latest statement on Friday that it had detected signs of stability in services after carrying out broader reforms with the aim of restoring services.

The disruption affected government agencies in Australia, Japan, and the United States, and caused disturbances for trading companies, delaying companies in publishing their results, and airline companies warned their clients of a delay in communication.

In Europe, stock exchange operator Euronext said its listing teams were experiencing problems communicating via email, while British insurance company Aviva said it was making alternative plans for earnings announcement calls. Danish shipping company Maersk warned customers of delayed emails and updates.

American artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Anthropic said they encountered problems with Microsoft's connectivity services, while Indian airlines IndiGo, Acasa Air and Air India said their email support services were affected.

The disruption affected the fund management activities of securities companies, life insurance companies and investment fund companies in Taiwan. A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that one of the companies was forced to cancel an operation to buy back bonds. A second source said another Taiwanese financial company had resorted to using fax to confirm deals.

Josh Gilbert, a market analyst at the eToro trading platform, said that investors are likely to look past the downtime issue for now, as a large number of customers cannot abandon the Microsoft system overnight.

"The biggest concern is that this is not the first 365 outage this year, and if reliability appears to be a recurring issue, it will give every IT department reason to think twice before putting more of their work in the hands of a single provider," he added.

Microsoft faced a disruption in 365 services last January, as well as in October of last year. Last month, Microsoft reported a malfunction in its cloud platform (Azure), affecting its productivity software package and a group of industries around the world.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Digital Affairs in Germany said on Friday that his country expects a disruption in Microsoft services to have a major impact on German companies. But the spokesman confirmed that there were no reports of major malfunctions in the German federal administration.

Australian Home Affairs and Cyber ​​Security Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft did not believe it was dealing with a cyber attack. “The impact they are dealing with... is largely focused on email systems,” Burke explained in a press conference. The Australian Intelligence Agency and the Federal Police were among those affected by this outage on Friday.

The US House of Representatives said that the malfunction affected its users, and that its engineers were working with Microsoft. Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki told reporters that the malfunction affects the infrastructure of government information systems.

Microsoft said in a service status notice that features of Microsoft 365 services that rely on Online Exchange and email were affected, while elements that do not depend on Online Exchange remained functional. Exchange Online is the company's cloud messaging platform, which provides email, calendar, contacts and tasks services.

While many companies and government institutions around the world are preparing emergency plans amidst a state of confusion, especially since this holiday represents a very serious problem, part of the Internet world is taking a completely different approach, as pioneers of social media platforms deal with the situation with some fun. Users on Instagram and TikTok share sarcastic videos and pictures (memes), and snapshots from inside their offices, with a lot of sarcasm.