This seems to be working for me: http://www.amazon.com/?is_it_jeff=yes

Seems to me that it's probably the caching layer that's borked.

Looks like it's back up

Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

still down from western europe. And to isup.me : http://www.isup.me/amazon.com

it is up.

Not for me (America).

Up for me (Kentucky)

Why is_it_jeff?

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.

I got that bit thank you :-) but I did not understand why there might be a web page on amazon named after bozos, some sort of test page? Or a joke that has completely passed me by?

It's a joke like if you could add a parameter in the URL stating you're the CEO of the company and you will be granted access no matter what.

What the hell?

I'm fairly certain the OP only added that text after the link so that it would be allowed by the duplicate link filter on HN.

Funny. I followed the "down=yes" link and got the "Service unavailable" page, as expected.

Then I clicked on the "down=no" link for fun, and the page partially loaded for me. I refreshed it and got the whole front page loaded. And then one more time and got the "Service unavailable" again...