Amazon.com closed its doors for around 20 minutes at around 1 am, Seattle time; Amazon.co.uk also disappeared at the same time (GMT) for a similar period. It's not known whether the synchronised downtime was planned or was due to something more sinister. A message on the Amazon.com site read: "We're sorry, but our Books, Music, DVD & Video, Toys & Games, Electronics & Software, and Home Improvement stores are closed temporarily. We expect to be back soon." A spokeswoman for the UK branch of the online bookstore confirmed that Amazon.co.uk fell victim to a technical problem on Friday. It was linked with the outage at Amazon.com although she said no other country sites were affected. The Amazon.co.uk spokeswoman would not be drawn on how much the outage could have cost the e-tailer in lost sales. ®