Amazon downed for 10 minutes due to promotion

Amazon ran a special promotion this week but under-estimated the demand for the product from users with fast connections. At exactly 2pm EST, the offer was open (an Xbox core system at less than half-price). Unfortunately for Amazon, so many people were waiting for the promotion that the entire Amazon website – not just the promotion page – sank without a trace from just before 2pm, to at least 2:12pm. The home page, the product pages, everything, were unavailable.

With a thousand of these consoles available, I’d love to know how many people actually tried to ping the website. Considering the fact that Amazon is one of the top 10 largest websites in the world, it would have to be some extreme surge to bring them down.