Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services.
CNBC
Receiving Amazon web services is rare, but it has enormous consequences.
It happened this week, when Amazon gave up Parler, a social network that gained attention from conservatives after Twitter banned President Donald Trump and hosted 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 Amazon backed out, asking the court to dismiss Parler’s motion.
The incident demonstrates a type of power that Amazon has almost uniquely, because so many companies rely on it to provide calculations 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 being listed in the Apple and Google app stores, but sending from the Amazon cloud left Parler missing from the internet for days.
Parler’s team of engineers built software that relied on computing resources from Amazon Web Services, and the company held talks with Amazon about adopting the proprietary AWS database and artificial intelligence services, the company said in a statement. district court case Wednesday.
It would take time to learn how to perform similar functions on your own Parler servers or on a cloud other than AWS. And in Parler’s case, time is of the essence, because it came as the service gained new users’ attention following Trump’s ban on Twitter.
Parler’s engineers could learn to use other computing infrastructures or the company could hire developers who already have this knowledge. But because no cloud provider is as popular as Amazon, people skilled in, say, the Oracle cloud 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. The companies have revealed details about their transactions with Amazon that warn about this type of sudden interruption for years.
In 2010, the DNA sequencing company Complete Genomics said that “an interruption of services by Amazon Web Services, which we rely on to provide our customers with completed genomic data, will result in our customers not receiving their data on time.”
Game company Zynga warned of how its AWS foundation could quickly disappear when it submitted its prospectus for its initial public offering in 2011. At the time, AWS hosted half of the traffic for Zynga games, such as FarmVille and Words with Friends. , said the company. .
“AWS may terminate the agreement without cause by providing a written notice 180 days in advance and may terminate the agreement with a written notice 30 days in advance for the cause, including any material breach or breach of the agreement by us that we do not terminate within 30- during the day, “Zynga said.
AWS may even terminate or suspend its agreement with a customer immediately in certain circumstances, as it did in 2010 with Wikileaks, indicating breaches of the terms of the AWS service.
Parler began using AWS in 2018, long after the Wikileaks incident and the first corporate revelations about the possibility of cloud outages.
When AWS told Parler that it intended to suspend Parler’s AWS account, it said that Parler had repeatedly violated the terms, including by not owning or controlling the rights to its content.
For several weeks, AWS alerted Parler to content content cases of users who encouraged violence, Amazon said in a court case. More of this content came after protesters stormed the Washington Capitol building on Jan. 6, interrupting congressional confirmation of the results of the 2020 Electoral College election. AWS reported that Parler was not doing enough to quickly eliminate that kind of information from his social network.
Parler could have protected himself more. Large AWS customers can sign up for broader agreements, which allow customers longer to comply if they end infringement rules.
Gartner analyst Lydia Leong explained this difference in a blog post: “Thirty days is a typical time period specified as a contract healing period (and is the healing period in the AWS Enterprise Enterprise Agreement), but The cloud provider’s direct access (such as the AWS Customer Agreement) does not normally have a healing period, allowing immediate action to be taken at the provider’s discretion, “she wrote.
Other cloud providers have their own conditions that their customers must meet. However, AWS now has millions of customers and has more of a cloud infrastructure market than any other provider. As a result, many organizations could be exposed to the type of treatment Parler received, so rarely if they don’t behave according to Amazon standards.
Parler acknowledged the disadvantages of being seen by a cloud provider, but in the end, the flexibility offered by the cloud was too appealing to be ignored. “I am very anti-cloud and anti-centralized, although AWS has its place for high-explosive traffic,” wrote Alexander Blair, head of technology at Parler. a post on the job.
Parler and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
CLOCK: Apple removes Parler from the App Store amid the crackdown on violent posts