Microsoft Shares Drop More Than 3% Following Widespread Service Disruption

Shares of US technology giant Microsoft fell by more than 3% in pre-market trading on Friday, following widespread disruptions affecting several of the company's services.

Trading data showed that at 14:01 Moscow time, Microsoft's stock had declined by 3.33% to $506.12 per share.

Earlier, outage-tracking platform Downdetector reported a significant surge in complaints about Microsoft services from users across 74 countries and territories.

Reports of technical problems began emerging on Thursday evening, with the majority of complaints coming from the United States. Meanwhile, Charles Lamanna, a Microsoft vice president, said the widespread disruptions were not caused by hackers or any other form of external interference.