Amazon is seeking a court order to keep Brian Hall, former Amazon Web Services vice president of product marketing, from editing and summarizing keynote speeches and slides for the upcoming Google Cloud Next conference in his new job with the rival cloud platform — saying the work “threatens immediate and irreparable harm to Amazon” due to his inside knowledge of its secret cloud plans.
It’s the latest twist in a larger dispute between Amazon and Hall over his new Google Cloud role. The case, first reported by GeekWire this week, has emerged as a new lightning rod in the longstanding industry debate over non-compete agreements.
New filings in King County Superior Court in Seattle this week include an extraordinary public statement by a high-ranking AWS executive about the competitive implications of Google’s annual cloud event.
“My team watches Google Cloud Next incredibly carefully as this conference has the potential to upstage our anticipated launches and interrupt our positive press for the next year,” says Matt Wood, AWS vice president of artificial intelligence, in a filing supporting Amazon’s motion. “I am especially sensitive to the impact of Google Cloud Next given my previous work in product strategy and speech writing for AWS CEO Andy Jassy. I know first-hand how a CEO’s speech can have a real and concrete impact on the business due to a shift in perception and press coverage.”
Wood continued, “If Mr. Hall provided Google with his perspective on Google’s narratives, it would be devastating, especially with regard to my business in ML.”
AI and machine learning have long been considered among Google Cloud’s strengths. The statements by Amazon underscore the broader importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning to the major cloud providers. AWS is critical to Amazon’s larger business, with $7.7 billion in sales in the March quarter and $2.2 billion in operating profits, half of the company’s total. It’s the top public cloud platform by market share, followed by Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
Lawyers for Hall responded in a filing overnight, describing the Google Cloud Next assignment as a basic task, normally handled by someone three levels lower in the organization. They say it’s part of a larger effort by Google to keep Hall occupied while awaiting the outcome of the larger dispute with Amazon over his new role.
“I do not understand this temporary assignment to require using or disclosing what I know regarding Amazon’s marketing plans, nor [do] I intend to carry out this assignment in such a way as to draw on anything I learned at Amazon,” Hall says in his own declaration, supporting his opposition to Amazon’s motion.
Hall adds, “Even if it were possible to brainstorm a way to complete these duties and responsibilities in a way that disclosed or made use of Amazon’s confidential information, I have no intention of doing so, or of otherwise violating my post-employment obligations to Amazon.”
Google Cloud Next, originally scheduled for April, was postponed and changed to a nine-week virtual event starting next month, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hall’s lawyers say the presentations for the conference have been largely set, and Hall would be focusing on issues such as consistency and overlap among the different speeches and presentations.
The assignment was chosen, they say, not because of Hall’s inside knowledge of Amazon’s secrets, but because of his prior experience working as a speechwriter for Microsoft executives including then-CEO Steve Ballmer and co-founder Bill Gates.
In a declaration filed by Amazon, Rachel Thornton, AWS vice president of global marketing, says that Hall played a similar role for Amazon’s re:Invent 2019 cloud conference, working for 21 weeks to help develop Jassy’s keynote speech, and then meeting with the press to provide analysis of Amazon’s product launches.
Thornton says, “Given the nature of the conference, it is not possible for Mr. Hall to, as Google proposed, ‘assist Google Cloud with messaging at its Next ’20 conference for current and prospective customers, partners and developers’ without relying on the confidential information and strategies he helped develop at Amazon.”
“For example,” she adds, “Mr. Hall could revise Google’s narrative to anticipate and undercut, among other things, what products AWS intends to launch, the products’ relative strengths and weaknesses, how Google positions its products in the marketplace, to whom Google’s products will be marketed, and associated pricing. Google could also use that information to preempt AWS’s existing marketing plans through anticipatory marketplace messaging.”
Seeking to show the significance of its secrets, Amazon filed several documents under seal with the court, making King County Superior Court Judge Sean O’Donnell privy to some of its most closely guarded plans.
They include “a highly confidential launch list of new AWS products, services, and features through 2021,” and a document containing “highly confidential information regarding a new service AWS has developed that is set to be launched in December 2020 or in 2021 but has not yet been made public.”
It’s unusual for Amazon to focus on a competitor in what is ultimately a public forum. One of the company’s leadership principles acknowledges the importance of paying attention to competitors but says customer obsession is paramount.
The non-compete dispute is also unusual because it involves a marketing leader, not an engineering executive with deep technical expertise. However, Amazon makes the case in its latest filing that Hall routinely met with top AWS executives and had access to confidential strategic planning documents, giving him “broad exposure to and involvement in Amazon’s cloud business plans.”
“In short, Hall knows — and participated in formulating — the roadmap and competitive strategies for Amazon’s cloud computing products through 2021, and he was instrumental in selling that vision to Amazon’s actual and prospective customers,” the company says in its filing.
Hall responds in his filing, “As an initial matter, I do not even know to what extent my knowledge of Amazon’s marketing plans is even still current or relevant.”
“But more importantly,” he adds, “my understanding is that the content of Google’s keynotes and other sessions for Next ‘20 has already been determined by the conference speakers and the Google product teams. These individuals and teams have already made critical decisions regarding what features to build and emphasize, and my role will simply be to edit these speeches to ensure consistency and avoid duplication across the nine-week conference.”
A court hearing on Amazon’s larger motion for a preliminary injunction is set for July 31. Amazon is seeking to enforce an 18-month non-compete provision in Hall’s employment contract, asking for an injunction to prevent him from working in cloud product marketing for Google during that period.
In the meantime, Amazon is asking for a temporary restraining order to keep Hall from working on Google Cloud Next, because Google had planned to have Hall start working on the assignment this week. Court filings suggest that a hearing on the issue imminent.
A separate short-term assignment, in which Hall would review and make recommendations on the Google Cloud product marketing organizational structure, does not appear to be in dispute.
In the larger case, Hall is asking the court to rule the noncompete clause “overbroad, unreasonable, and unenforceable,” and to declare that his new role “will not require him to use or disclose any Amazon confidential information.”
It’s the latest in a series of lawsuits filed by Amazon and others in Washington state to enforce non-compete clauses in employment contracts. The controversial agreements have essentially been banned in California, and Washington state last year enacted new provisions meant to limit their applicability.
Exempted from the new Washington state law, however, are employees who make more than $100,000 annually. Amazon says in its latest filing that Hall’s “total compensation for 2019 was seven figures and projected to increase in 2020.”
Here is Amazon’s motion, followed by Hall’s response.
Amazon vs. Brian Hall – Mot… by GeekWire on Scribd
Amazon v. Brian Hall – Response re: Google Cloud Next by GeekWire on Scribd
