Amazon’s down — and everyone freaks out!

Amazon.com, the Web’s largest e-commerce site (well, not counting eBay) and a bellwether for the entire Internet industry, is experiencing technical difficulties.

Everyone, you are now cleared for mass hysteria.

Still Down.!!!!!!!

Still down. Rats. Any catastrophic event in Seattle?

Could have been DoS’ed? (denial of service attack)

This is what happens when you sell pre-orders of the MGS4/PS3 bundle.

Those are just a few samples of the user reactions on Digg.

It’s not clear what the problem is. Amazon’s seller forums carry only a terse statement from the company, calling the outage an “Un-Planned Event” [sic]:

We are currently investigating an issue that has impacted the availability of the Amazon.com website. Engineers are actively engaged in resolving this issue and we will provide an update once the issue is resolved. We appreciate your patience during this time.