Facebook outage highlights risks of overdependence on single tech giant

When Facebook shut down Monday millions lost their only access to the internet.

On Monday, the crash of Facebook and the company's apps threw the Internet into disarray and plunged billions of users into digital darkness. The outage illustrated how essential Facebook's services have become as well as the risks of its dominance, particularly in developing countries.

Facebook said in a blog post on Tuesday the crash was caused by an error during routine maintenance, which took down global data servers.

During the outage, Facebook's website and app were inaccessible, as were WhatsApp and Instagram, two of the company's most popular acquisitions.

While the outage was relatively brief -- around six hours -- some researchers said it points to the downsides of a growing reliance on a single company's services.