Andy Jassy, Head of Amazon Web Services.
CNBC
Amazon Web Services is a rare start-up, but it has a huge impact.
It happened this week, when Amazon took down Parler, a social network that drew attention from hackers after Twitter banned President Donald Trump and kept content that encouraged violence. Parler filed a lawsuit against Amazon in federal district court in an attempt to stop Amazon from suspending Parler’s account, and pushed Amazon back, demanding that the court reject Parler’s move.
The event highlights a kind of power that Amazon consumes almost unparalleled as so many companies rely on it to deliver computing and data storage. Amazon controlled 45% of its cloud infrastructure in 2019, more than any other company, according to estimates from technology research firm Gartner. The app remained unlisted in Apple and Google app stores, but by being removed from the Amazon cloud Parler has been off the internet for days.
Parler’s engineering team had built software to pull computing resources from Amazon Web Services, and the company had been in talks with Amazon about adopting an AWS-owned database and artificial intelligence services, he said. the company in a district court filing Wednesday.
It would take time to figure out how to perform tasks similar to the Parler servers themselves or cloud rather than AWS. And for Parler, time is of the essence, as it came as the service gained new attention and users after Trump’s ban on Twitter.
Parler engineers could learn to use other computing infrastructures, or the company could hire developers who already have that knowledge. But since cloud provider isn’t as popular as Amazon, people who are skilled in, say, an Oracle cloud aren’t as easy to find as those who are familiar with building on AWS.
There were warnings
The speed with which Amazon implemented should come as no surprise. Companies have been publishing details of their contracts with Amazon warning of the types of sudden stops for years.
In 2010, the company released the DNA series Genomics Complete Genomics he said “a breach of services by Amazon Web Services, on which we are responsible for delivering complete genomic data to our customers, would mean that our customers will not receive their data on time.”
Gambling company Zynga warned of how its AWS base could quickly collapse when it filed the manual for its first public offering in 2011. At the time, AWS hosting half of the traffic for Zynga games, such as FarmVille and Words with Friends, the company said.
“AWS may terminate the agreement without cause by giving 180 days prior written notice, and may terminate the agreement with 30 days prior written notice of cause, giving including any material negligence or breach of agreement with us that we do not heal within the 30- day period, “Zynga said.
AWS can even terminate or terminate an agreement with a customer immediately in certain circumstances as it did in 2010 with Wikileaks, indicating that they were in breach of AWS’s terms of service.
Parler started using AWS in 2018, long after the Wikileaks event and the first corporate announcements about cloud-breaking capability.
When AWS informed Parler that they intended to cancel the AWS Parler account, he stated that Parler had again breached the terms, including by not owning or disposing of. control the rights to its content.
Over several weeks, AWS warned Parler about examples of consumer content that provoked violence, Amazon said in a court file. More of that content surfaced after protesters stormed the Capitol building in Washington on Jan. 6, halting Congress’ confirmation of Election College results from the 2020 presidential election. AWS that Parler was not doing enough to quickly remove that kind of information from his social network.
Parler could defend himself even more. Large AWS customers can sign up for wider deals, which will give more time for customers to comply if they end up breaking rules.
Gartner analyst Lydia Leong explained this difference in a blog post: “Thirty days is a common schedule specified as treatment time in contracts (and this is the treatment period in a standard AWS Enterprise Agreement), but cloud click-provider agreements (such as the AWS Customer Agreement usually do not have a treatment period), allow immediate action to be taken at the provider’s discretion, “she wrote. .
Other cloud providers have their own terms that their customers must follow. AWS now has millions of customers, however, and it holds more of the cloud infrastructure market than any other provider. As a result, many organizations could be exposed to the kind of treatment Parler received, as it is, if they don’t conduct themselves according to Amazon standards.
Parler acknowledged the disadvantages of seeing a cloud provider, but in the end, the flexible cloud offering was too attractive to avoid. “I am personally very much against clouds and against centralization, although AWS has a place for high-explosion traffic,” wrote Alexander Blair, Parler’s head of technology. post on the service.
Parler and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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