Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services.
CNBC
Starting Amazon Web Services is rare, but it has huge consequences.
It happened this week, when Amazon abandoned Parler, a social network that gained momentum from conservatives after Twitter banned President Donald Trump and started hosting content that encouraged violence. Parler filed a lawsuit against Amazon in the federal district court in an attempt to prevent Amazon from suspending Parler’s account, and Amazon backed down, asking the court to deny Parler’s motion.
The incident demonstrates a kind of power that Amazon wields almost exclusively, because many companies rely on it to provide computing and data storage. Amazon controlled 45% of the cloud infrastructure in 2019, more than any other company, according to estimates by technology research firm Gartner. The app survived without being listed in the Apple and Google app stores, but being thrown out of the Amazon cloud left Parler absent from the internet for days.
Parler’s engineering team developed software based on computing resources from Amazon Web Services, and the company is in talks with Amazon over the adoption of AWS proprietary databases and artificial intelligence services, the company said in a lawsuit. district court on Wednesday.
It would take time to figure out how to perform similar functions on Parler’s own servers or on a different cloud than AWS. And in Parler’s case, time is critical, because it came when the service was gaining attention and new users after Trump’s Twitter ban.
Parler’s engineers can learn to use another computing infrastructure, or the company can hire developers who already have that knowledge. But since no cloud provider is as popular as Amazon, people empowered, say, in the Oracle cloud are not as easy to find as those who know how to build on AWS.
The notices were there
The speed with which Amazon has acted should not come as a shock. For years, companies have been releasing details about their deals with Amazon that warn of this kind of sudden discontinuation.
In 2010, the DNA sequencing company Complete Genomics said that “an interruption of services by Amazon Web Services, which we rely on to deliver finished genomic data to our customers, would result in our customers not receiving their data in time.”
The gaming company Zynga warned of how quickly its AWS foundation could disappear when it presented the prospectus for its initial public offering in 2011. At the time, AWS hosted half the traffic for Zynga games, such as FarmVille and Words with Friends, said company. .
“AWS can terminate the contract without cause, providing 180 days written notice, and can terminate the contract with 30 days written notice for just cause, including any material default or breach of contract by us that we have not corrected within 30- day period, “said Zynga.
AWS may even terminate or suspend your contract with a customer immediately under certain circumstances, as it did in 2010 with Wikileaks, pointing to violations of the AWS terms of service.
Parler started using AWS in 2018, long after the Wikileaks incident and the first corporate disclosures about the possibility of disruptions in the cloud.
When AWS told Parler that it planned to suspend Parler’s AWS account, it said Parler repeatedly violated the terms, including by not owning or controlling the rights to its content.
Over the course of several weeks, AWS alerted Parler to cases of user content that encouraged violence, Amazon said in a lawsuit. More of that content came to light after protesters stormed the Washington Capitol building on January 6, interrupting Congressional confirmation of the Electoral College’s results of the 2020 presidential election. AWS reported that Parler was not doing enough to remove that kind of information from your social network quickly.
Parler could have protected himself more. Large AWS customers can sign up for longer contracts, allowing more customers time to comply if they break the rules.
Lydia Leong, an analyst at Gartner, exposed this difference in a blog post: “Thirty days is a common term specified as a term of contract expiration (and is the term of expiration in the standard AWS Enterprise Agreement), but click agreements cloud provider (such as as the AWS Customer Agreement) does not normally have a curing period, allowing immediate actions to be taken at the discretion of the vendor, “she wrote.
Other cloud providers have their own terms that their customers must follow. AWS now has millions of customers, however, and holds more of the cloud infrastructure market than any other provider. As a result, many organizations may be exposed to the type of treatment Parler received, however rare, if they do not behave according to Amazon standards.
Parler recognized the disadvantages of being indebted to a cloud provider, but ultimately, the flexibility that clouds offered was too attractive to ignore. “Personally, I’m very anti-cloud and anti-centralized, although AWS has its place for high-explosive traffic,” wrote Alexander Blair, Parler’s chief technology officer, in a post in service.
Parler and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
TO WATCH: Apple removes Parler from App Store amid crackdown on violent posts