Windows Search Went Down For Hours Because of a Microsoft Services Outage

Microsoft’s built-in Windows search went down for more than three hours today due to access and latency issues “with multiple Microsoft 365 services.” While the issues have since been resolved, it comes just days after Microsoft’s Teams service experienced a widespread outage after the company forgot to renew a SSL certificate. The Verge reports:

Windows search is built into Microsoft’s latest Windows 10 operating system, and it started presenting blank search results for apps or any other search queries at around 8AM ET today. Windows search uses the Bing backend to search for results across the web, and it appears that this was the source of the issue. Microsoft blames a “third-party networking fiber provider” for experiencing a network disruption resulting in multiple Microsoft 365 services issues.

“This issue has been resolved for most users and in some cases you may need to reboot your machine,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge.

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