Chris Vonderhaar, a longtime Amazon Web Services executive who left the company this spring, has joined AWS rival Google Cloud.
Vonderhaar started at Google Cloud this week with the title of Vice President, Demand & Supply Management, a Google spokesperson confirmed Wednesday morning in a message to GeekWire. The company declined to provide further details about his role.
His hiring is part of a broader shakeup in Google Cloud’s management team, CNBC reported overnight. The changes include longtime Google executive Urs Holzle, a key technical leader for the company’s data center initiatives, shifting to a role as an individual contributor, according to the CNBC report.
News of Vonderhaar’s sudden exit from Amazon surfaced late in May. He worked for Amazon for 13 years, most recently overseeing the design and operation of Amazon Web Services’ global network of data centers.
There was no formal announcement at the time. Word of his departure emerged after Amazon employees noticed that his name was missing from the internal corporate directory.
In the past, Amazon has been aggressive in pursuing legal action against some key executives who took jobs with its competitors. The company’s standard employment agreement includes a non-competition clause that can be used to try to limit or block executives from working for rivals.
Non-compete agreements have essentially been banned in California. Washington state in 2019 enacted provisions to limit their applicability, but the contracts can still apply to employees who earn more than $100,000 a year.
Google did not address a question about potential constraints on Vonderhaar’s role in light of Amazon’s standard non-competition agreement, which typically applies to a period of 18 months after departure.
GeekWire has contacted Amazon for comment about Vonderhaar’s new role. We’ve also messaged Vonderhaar, who previously declined to comment about his departure from Amazon.
Amazon has a history of suing executives who join Google after leaving AWS. However, most of these disputes have involved executives in marketing and sales.
- In 2012, a federal judge in Seattle ruled that former AWS sales leader Daniel Powers could work for Google Cloud with minimal restrictions.
- In 2020, Amazon settled a lawsuit that it filed against a sales executive, Philip Moyer, alleging that his new role would “threaten the disclosure of Amazon’s highly confidential information.”
- Later the same year, Amazon reached a settlement with Brian Hall, a former AWS marketing executive who was sued by the company after he joined Google Cloud.
Amazon Web Services continues to lead Microsoft and Google in the cloud infrastructure services market, with 32% market share as of the first quarter, according to Synergy Research Group. Google Cloud turned its first profit and boosted its share by 1 point in the quarter.
At one point, industry insiders speculated that Vonderhaar might be in the running for the top job at AWS, after Andy Jassy was promoted to Amazon CEO more than two years ago. Instead, the company tapped Adam Selipsky, former CEO of Tableau Software, who returned to Amazon to lead the cloud business.
News of Google Cloud hiring Vonderhaar was first made public on social media Tuesday by Amy Nelson, the former Seattle entrepreneur whose husband, former AWS real estate manager Carleton Nelson, has been sued by Amazon over data center real estate deals, including claims that Nelson’s involvement in the deals violated his non-competition agreement.
Amy Nelson noted the irony of Vonderhaar, who has given a deposition in that case, now going to work for a direct AWS competitor.
