Amazon Uses Non-Competes in Ways Its California Rivals Can’t

When Brian Hall accepted a job at Google early this year, he says his former employer was congratulatory. Amazon.com Inc. cloud-computing boss Andy Jassy said by email that he wished Hall would have stuck around longer, but that he wished him “nothing but the best.”

A human resources executive, informed of Hall’s move in a text message, replied: “Very happy to hear this news.”

A month later, it was clear Amazon had arrived at a different conclusion. The retailer and cloud-computing giant sued Hall, seeking to prevent him from taking his new role as a vice president in Google cloud’s ...