Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services.
CNBC
Getting started with Amazon Web Services is rare, but it has huge consequences.
It happened this week, when Amazon dropped Parler, a social network that gained strength for conservatives after Twitter banned President Donald Trump and hosted content that encouraged violence. Parler filed a lawsuit against Amazon in federal district court to try to prevent Amazon from suspending Parler’s account and Amazon withdrew, requesting that the court deny Parler’s motion.
The incident demonstrates a type of power that Amazon wields almost uniquely, because many companies rely on it to offer computing and data storage. Amazon controlled 45% of the cloud infrastructure in 2019, more than any other company, according to estimates by technology research company Gartner. The app survived without appearing in Apple and Google app stores, but its removal from Amazon’s cloud has left Parler absent from the internet for days.
Parler’s engineering team had built software that relied on computer resources from Amazon Web Services, and the company had held talks with Amazon about adopting proprietary AWS databases and artificial intelligence services. , the company told a district court.
It would take some time to figure out how to perform similar functions on Parler’s own servers or in a cloud other than AWS. And in Parler’s case, time is of the essence, because it came as the service gained attention and new users followed Trump’s ban on Twitter.
Parler engineers could learn to use other IT infrastructures or the company could hire developers who already had this knowledge. But because no cloud provider is as popular as Amazon, people who are experts in the Oracle cloud, for example, are not as easy to find as those who know how to build on AWS.
The warnings were there
The speed with which Amazon acted should not be a shock. Companies have been divulging details about their agreements with Amazon that warn of such sudden suspensions for years.
In 2010, the DNA sequencing company Complete Genomics he said that “an interruption of services by Amazon Web Services, whom we rely on to deliver finished genomic data to our customers, would cause our customers not to receive their data on time.”
Gaming company Zynga warned about how its AWS foundation could quickly disappear when it unveiled the brochure 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, the company said. .
“AWS may terminate the agreement without cause by providing written notice 180 days in advance and may terminate the agreement 30 days in advance in writing for any reason, including any material breach or breach of the agreement by ours that we don’t cure within 30 days of the day, ”Zynga said.
AWS may even terminate or suspend your agreement with a customer immediately in certain circumstances, as it did in 2010 with Wikileaks, noting violations of AWS terms and conditions.
Parler began using AWS in 2018, long after the Wikileaks incident and early corporate disclosures about the possibility of cloud outages.
When AWS told Parler that it planned to suspend Parler’s AWS account, it said Parler had repeatedly violated the terms, even by not owning or controlling the rights to its content.
Over the course of several weeks, AWS alerted Parler of user content cases encouraging violence, Amazon said in a lawsuit. More of this content emerged after protesters stormed the Capitol building in Washington on Jan. 6, interrupting congressional confirmation of the results of the 2020 Presidential Election College election. AWS reported that Parler did not enough to quickly remove this type of information from your social network.
Talking could have been more protected. Large AWS customers can sign more extensive agreements, which also allow customers to comply with them if they end up breaking the rules.
Gartner analyst Lydia Leong explained this difference in a blog post: “Thirty days is a common time period that is specified as a healing period in contracts (and is the healing period of the AWS standard business agreement), but cloud provider click agreements (such as (according to the AWS customer) usually do not have a cure period, which allows for immediate action at the provider’s discretion, “he wrote). .
Other cloud providers have their own terms that their customers must follow. AWS now has millions of customers, however, and has more of the cloud infrastructure market than any other provider. As a result, many organizations could be exposed to the type of treatment Parler received, however rare, if they don’t behave according to Amazon standards.
Parler acknowledged the drawbacks of being forced into a cloud provider, but ultimately the offer of cloud flexibility was too appealing 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 head of technology. a publication at the service.
Parler and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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