China’s ride-hailing giant Didi blames ‘underlying software failure’ for breakdown that plunged service into disarray
- The breakdown at Didi plunged thousands of people into a desperate situation on Monday and Tuesday
- Didi says it will carry out ‘in-depth technical risk identification and upgrade work’ to fully ensure service stability
Didi Chuxing said the breakdown of its ride-hailing service in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou earlier this week was caused by an “underlying system software failure” and not external attacks.
In a statement published on its official WeChat account on Wednesday, Didi said it “would carry out in-depth technical risk identification and upgrade work to fully ensure service stability and do our best to avoid similar accidents in the future”. “We let our users down, and apologise sincerely,” the company said.
The breakdown at Didi, China’s answer to Uber which handles about 30 million orders per day, plunged thousands of people into a desperate situation on Monday and Tuesday, when they could not book rides and the billing service malfunctioned.
Ride-hailing giant Didi apologises for widespread service outage
Didi has not provided any further technical details about the breakdown at this stage.
Meanwhile, Alibaba Cloud suffered its second outage this month on Monday, which affected customers in mainland China, Hong Kong and the United States.
“From 9:16am Beijing time on November 27, 2023, Alibaba Cloud detected abnormalities in console and OpenAPI access for database products,” Alibaba said in a statement on Tuesday. The problem was fixed by 10:58am, or nearly two hours later.
The outage came just weeks after Alibaba Cloud reported a service failure a day after this year’s Singles’ Day shopping festival. The three and a half-hour service breakdown hit some of Alibaba’s most popular apps, including workplace communications tool DingTalk and second-hand goods trading platform Xianyu, as well as online marketplace Taobao. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
The technical incidents are setbacks for two Big Tech firms that take pride in the reliability of their technology.
Didi was the first Big Tech company to undergo a cybersecurity review by the Chinese government, which came shortly after its ill-fated New York listing in June 2021.
It was banned from signing up new users for 18 months until January this year, after it received a US$1.2 billion fine from the government over data violations. Despite the punishment, the company remains China’s most popular ride-hailing service.
