In less than a year, Amazon has made more money from the things developed by Elastic than this startup, because it is more closely integrated with other Amazon products and easier to be used by others. To this end, last year Elasticity added advanced features and restricted companies such as Amazon from using these features. However, Amazon still copied many of these features and gave them away for free.
In September, Elastic launched a counterattack. It sued Amazon in federal court in California for infringing its trademark, because Amazon once gave its product the same name: Elasticsearch. The company said in the lawsuit that Amazon "misled consumers." Amazon denies any fault. The case is still under trial.
Since Microsoft dominated the PC industry with Windows in the mid-1990s, no technology platform has brought so much fear to its competitors like Amazon's current cloud computing department.
Although you may not know what cloud computing is, it has developed into one of the largest and most profitable businesses in the technology industry, which can provide computing power and software for enterprises. Amazon is the main supplier of this business.
Amazon CEO once called AWS "nobody cares"
Amazon has been using its cloud computing division (called Amazon Web Services or AWS) to copy and integrate software created by other technology companies. Then through easier use, shielding competitors' products, reducing the price of their own products through bundling discounts, and establishing their own advantages in service. These measures make customers flow to Amazon, and the original developers of the corresponding software may end up with nothing.
Even so, smaller competitors say they have no choice but to cooperate with Amazon. Considering the company's extensive influence among customers, start-ups usually agree with the latter's restrictions on the former to promote their products, and voluntarily share their customer and product information with the latter. In order to gain the privilege of selling through AWS, start-ups have to return some sales revenue to Amazon.
Some companies have a name for what Amazon is doing: strip mining software. By stealing other people's innovations, stealing other people's engineers and profiting from their creations, Amazon has curbed the development of potential competitors and forced them to readjust the way they do business.
All these have promoted the examination of Amazon and whether it abuses its dominant market position and engages in anti-competitive behavior. The strategy adopted by the company led several competitors to start discussing anti-monopoly litigation against it. Regulators and legislators are studying its impact on the industry.
Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare
Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare, a competitor of AWS, which protects websites from attacks, said: "Everyone is worried that Amazon's ambitions will have no end."
It's just that AWS Amazon intends to dominate one of many industries in the United States. The company changed retail, logistics, book publishing and Hollywood.
However, what Amazon does through AWS may have a greater impact. In the great transformation to cloud computing, the company is undoubtedly the market leader, and its volume is three times that of its nearest competitor Microsoft. Every day, when millions of people watch movies on Netflix or upload photos to Apple's iCloud (this service also runs on Amazon's machines), millions of people have unconsciously interacted with AWS.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos once called AWS an "uninvited" idea. This service was born at the beginning of 2 1 century. In order to launch new projects and functions, retailers at that time had to spend a lot of energy assembling computer systems. Once the general computer infrastructure was established, Amazon realized that other companies needed similar capabilities.
Now, companies like Airbnb and General Electric actually rent computing from Amazon (using it can also be called "cloud") instead of buying their own equipment to run the system. Then, enterprises can store their own information on Amazon machines, extract data from them and analyze them.
For Amazon itself, the status of AWS has become crucial. With sales of $25 billion last year, this division is Amazon's most profitable business.
Amazon said in a statement that describing it as open-pit mining software was "stupid and despicable". It said that it has made great contributions to the software industry and its behavior is in the best interests of its customers.
Some technology companies say that they have found more customers through AWS. Even some companies that are entangled with Amazon have developed. For example, Elasticity went public last year and now has 1600 employees.
However, in interviews with more than 40 current and former Amazon employees and their competitors, many people said that the cost of Amazon's investment in AWS is intangible. They said it was difficult to measure how much of their business was taken away by Amazon, or how the threat posed by Amazon scared away potential investors. Many people asked to remain anonymous before speaking because they were afraid of angering Amazon.
Four people familiar with the matter said that in February this year, the CEOs of seven software companies held a meeting in Silicon Valley, at which they discussed launching an antitrust lawsuit against the giant. Their dissatisfaction echoes the complaints of suppliers who use Amazon shopping sites: once Amazon becomes a direct competitor, it is no longer a neutral party.
People familiar with the matter said that these CEOs did not continue to take legal action, in part because they were worried that the process would take too long.
Now, regulators are contacting Ama.
Some of zon's software competitors. The Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, which is investigating large technology companies, asked Amazon about some practices of AWS in a letter in September this year. According to relevant officials, FTC (Federal Trade Commission), which is also investigating Amazon, also questioned AWS competitors.
Salil Deshpande, founder of venture capital firm Uncorrelated, said that Amazon's approach to software startups is unsustainable.
He said: "It cuts off their channels of making money, forcibly takes away the owner's control over the software, and then attracts customers to use its own proprietary services."
Michael howard, CEO of Maria DB, said that the success of AWS is "open pit mining" based on open source technology.
Ten years ago, when Amazon's web services just started, Amazon has been trying to achieve sustainable profits.
Then start-ups opened their arms to AWS. This enables them to save money because they no longer need to buy their own computing devices, but only need to pay for what they use. Soon after, more and more companies poured into Amazon, and eventually more and more software was running on Amazon's computing infrastructure.
In 2009, Amazon set up a template to accelerate the growth of AWS. That year, AWS launched a service to manage databases, which are important software to help companies organize information.
AWS's database service was immediately welcomed by customers. But it doesn't run Amazon's own software. Instead, the software was copied from a free option (so-called open source).
Open source software has few similarities in business. This is equivalent to opening a coffee shop that delivers coffee for free. I hope everyone can spend some money to buy milk, sugar or cake.
But open source is a proven and effective model cultivated by the software industry, which can help to provide technology to customers quickly. There are often technologies that can be enjoyed in the fan community, improve them and publicize its benefits. Open source companies generally make money by providing customer support or paying for plug-ins.
This time, everyone noticed.
Todd Persen said: "A company builds a company around an open source product that everyone likes to use, and then suddenly a competitor competes with them with their stuff." To this end, he founded a non-open source software company this year, giving Amazon "no chance" to copy its own works.
The open source software industry has become Amazon's goal again and again. When it copies and integrates the software into AWS, it doesn't need a license, and it doesn't have to pay any fees to startups for their work.
This makes these companies have almost no available resources because they can't suddenly start charging for free software. Some people have changed their own rules about the use of software, restricting Amazon and others who want to turn what they develop into paid services.
Amazon bypassed some of their rule changes.
Last year, when Elasticity, who is now moving to Silicon Valley, changed its software rules, Amazon said in a blog post that open source software companies tried to "muddy the waters" by restricting the access of certain users.
Shay Banon, CEO of Elastic, wrote at the time that Amazon used "false altruism to cover up" its behavior. Resilience refused to accept an interview with Banon.
Last year, MongoDB, a popular technology for organizing document data, announced that it would require any company that manages its software as a network service to enjoy its underlying technology for free. This move is widely considered to be aimed at AWS, because AWS has not publicly shared its technology to create new services.
AWS quickly introduced its own technology, which looks the same as MongoDB's old software, so it is not necessary to obey the latter's new requirements.
This experience was the top topic of MongoDB CEO Dev Ittycheria's dinner with the heads of six other software companies this year. Their conversation took place in the home of a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, and then the style of painting changed a little dramatically: whether to publicly accuse Amazon of monopolistic behavior.
According to informed sources, at the banquet attended by the heads of software companies Confluent and Snowflake, some CEOs said that they were facing an unbalanced competitive environment. But no one appealed in the end.
Michael howard, CEO of Maria DB, an open source company, said, "AWS's success is open-pit mining based on open source technology. He estimates that Amazon earns five times as much as all its business income by running MariaDB software.
Andi Gutmans, vice president of AWS, said that some companies want to be the "only" companies that benefit from open source projects. He said that Amazon "is committed to ensuring that open source projects remain truly open, and customers can choose how to use specific open source software whether they choose AWS or not."
By 20 12, when AWS held its first developer conference, Amazon was no longer the only big player in cloud computing. Microsoft and Google have also launched their own competitive platforms. In response, Amazon launched more software services, making AWS indispensable.
Since then, Amazon has started to increase AWS services at an alarming rate, from 30 in 20 14 to about 175 in this year 12. It also has an inherent family advantage: simplicity and convenience.
Customers can add new AWS services with a click of the mouse and manage them with the same system. The newly added services will be included in the same bill, and using non-Amazon services on AWS will be more complicated.
Now, when customers log in to AWS, they will see a home page called Management Console. About 150 services are listed in the center of the page. They are all AWS's own products.
Even if customers choose non-Amazon options, the company will sometimes continue to promote its products. When someone creates a new database, they will see an advertisement about Amazon's own technology Aurora. If they choose other products, Amazon will still highlight their options as "recommended".
Guttmann said AWS works closely with many companies to integrate their products "as seamlessly as possible".
AWS Developers Conference is now one of the biggest technical events in the world.
Amazon's AWS Developers Conference is now one of the largest technology events in the world, attracting thousands of people to Las Vegas every year.
The focus of the conference was the new service that Jassy showed in his speech. Because the new features launched by AWS often bring trouble to some start-ups, this speech won the nickname "Red Wedding", and anyone familiar with Game of Thrones knows that it was a bloody event.
Cory Quinn of Duckbill Group said, "No one knows who will be killed next." He usually helps enterprises manage AWS bills and manages a mailing list called "A.W.S Last Week".
At last year's conference, Amazon launched a new tool-Amazon Cloud Watch Logs Insights-to help customers analyze information about their services.
Daniel Vassallo, a former AWS software engineer who helped develop the product, said that AWS executives wanted to enter this market, but they were worried that it would make people think that Amazon was eyeing Splunk. The latter provides similar tools and is one of the gold owners of AWS. Automatic alarm system
Vasallo said that Amazon previewed its new product to Splunk before the meeting and agreed not to release it during Jassy's speech.
Vasallo, who left Amazon in February this year, said, "Splunk, they are not very happy. But we will continue to do it. "
Splunk said it had established a "solid partnership" with AWS and declined to comment further.
Amazon has also made rules for its developer conference. Companies that have paid tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars for booths say they must submit banner advertisements, brochures and press releases to Amazon for approval.
According to a document released by AWS in August explaining the marketing guidelines of its partner companies, Amazon prohibits the use of certain words or phrases, such as "cloudy", which means supporting two or more cloud platforms. An Amazon spokesperson said that this practice has now stopped.
The code also requires enterprises to declare themselves as "the best", "the first", "the only" and "the leader" unless independent research proves otherwise.
Saket Saurabh, CEO of startup Nextla, said he had reservations about the cooperation with Amazon.
Redis Labs, founded in Tel Aviv, Israel, 20 1 1, is dedicated to the management of free software Redis, which can be used to organize and update data quickly. Amazon soon offered a similar paid service.
Although this has created a strong competitor for Redis Labs, Amazon's move has in turn verified Redis's technology. Since then, startups have received $65.438+$50 million in financing, which fully demonstrates the relationship between many software companies and Amazon that they can't live without you.
According to the estimation of former employees of Redis Lab, Amazon earns as much as $654.38+0 billion annually through Redis technology, which is at least 654.38+00 times the revenue of Redis Lab. They said that Amazon also tried to poach its own employees and used high discounts to pry the corner of Redis Lab.
AWS offers discounts to customers who promise to spend at least a certain amount, but the money spent on AWS's own services is different from that of competitors. The maximum discount for purchasing $ 1 external services is 50 cents. According to AWS customers, the discount does not apply to non-Amazon products.
If customers still choose Redis Labs through AWS, Redis Labs must return 15% of the revenue to Amazon.
The former employee said that Amazon's attempt to hire Redis Labs employees became so radical that the latter's executives deleted some online resumes of their technicians. A spokesman for Redis Labs said that the startup did not remember such a thing.
Former employees said that some executives of Redis Labs are considering launching an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon this year. Others are hesitant because 80% of the startup's revenue comes from AWS customers.
Leena Joshi, former vice president of marketing at Reddit Labs, said: "This is a love-hate relationship. On the one hand, most of our customers' business runs on AWS, so it is in our interest to integrate closely with them. At the same time, we know that they are stealing our business. "
Redis Labs declined to comment on its revenue or AWS's actions. It says Amazon provides "important services".
Not every company sees AWS as a threat. Ali Ghodsi is the CEO of Databricks, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to analyze data. He said that the sales staff of AWS increased the sales of their products.
He said, "I don't see them trying to stop us."
However, Saket Saurabh, CEO of Nexla, a California startup with 65,438+04 employees, said he had reservations about Amazon.
In August this year, Amazon began to provide data processing and monitoring services that compete with Nexla. Investors warned him not to share too much information with the giant.
But Saket Saurabh said that he had signed a cooperation agreement with Amazon in September this year. Why? Because Amazon's huge sales team can make its data processing and monitoring services reach a wide audience.
He said, "What choice do we have?"
Translator: Bossi.
Related Q&A: Related Q&A: What are the characteristics of Neoverse N 1 processor designed by Amazon for AWS cloud services? AWS, Amazon's cloud service division, has just designed a new multi-core processor for its cloud server. It is said that ARM's latest Neoverse N 1 architecture is adopted. Compared with the original Graviton processor, it has more cores, which can significantly improve performance.
Reuters quoted two sources as saying that this unnamed AWS CPU integrates as many as 32 cores. The chip can use Fabric interface to connect various special accelerators, thus greatly improving the processing speed of some calculation work.
(Title from AnandTech)
Neoverse N 1, also known as Ares, is similar to ARM's Cortex-A76 microarchitecture for consumer market to a great extent: it has four layers of memory access/decoder, and the pipeline depth is only 1 1, which can be reduced to 9 levels if necessary.
At the same time, Neoverse N 1 is designed to run at a relatively high frequency to provide maximum single-threaded performance, and has an unusual 1MB L2 cache architecture (the cache itself should not be considered as a part of the architecture) and other enhancements.
The clock frequency of Neoverse N 1 chip is as high as 3. 1 GHz, and the thermal design power consumption (TDP) of each SoC is about100W. Obviously, this microarchitecture was optimized for the workload of cloud servers from the beginning.
With the deepening of Amazon customization, this 32-core ARM processor is expected to provide excellent performance in its designed applications. It will take time to test whether AMR Rome or Intel Cascade Lake can be challenged.