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> Amazon doesn’t invest in greenfield projects that are not customer facing I don't think this is very true, they are just very good at turning around and sell

> Amazon doesn’t invest in greenfield projects that are not customer facing I don't think this is very true, they are just very good at turning around and selling the internal tech. The underlying technology for AWS was developed internally and it was not customer facing at first. Similarly if you look at their internal data platforms, they have invested heavily even though it's not customer facing (yet, because eventually they will start selling services inspired by the internal systems via AWS). I remember watching a presentation on how they invested large amounts of money into prototyping FC robotics technologies. If you look at AWS Kinesis or EventBridge, the technologies were developed for internal usage before they were sold. There is also considerable investment into distributed consensus technologies that hasn't been turned directly into products (yet). You're kind of right in that Amazon doesn't spend much time working on greenfield projects that don't have any forseeable business value (in contrast to say Google), but that is in many way a product of their organizational structure where two-pizza teams are supposed to do 'research' as part of their product work rather than having a pure R&D division.

7952 6y ago
Wasn't there an edict that amazon internal services have to be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. So even internal technology is designed with being customer facing in mind.
- TheCoelacanth 6y ago
  Does than mandate predate the creation of AWS?
  - xxpor 6y ago
    According to the Yegge rant, it was some time around 2001/2002/2003, so yes. https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611
- strgcmc 6y ago
  There is no mandate that I'm aware of (not that I know everything about everything), but it's definitely the case that projects with "externalization potential" (making up a phrase out of thin air) will generally be more likely to get funded and prioritized (of course, why wouldn't they be preferred?). So, even without a mandate, the market forces at play in terms of proposing roadmap projects and choosing what to invest in, will naturally tend to favor those solutions with can pull double-duty (solve an immediate problem/pain-point that Amazon already has, and with a clear path/potential to be converted into or evolve into an external sell-able service too).
  - bkanber 6y ago
    Here is Bezos' mandate from 2002. Quite prescient: https://jesusgilhernandez.com/2012/10/18/jeff-bezos-mandate-amazon-and-web-services/ https://jesusgilhernandez.com/2012/10/18/jeff-bezos-mandate-...
    - strgcmc 6y ago
      It's a little different from the idea of "all services must be something we can turn around and sell to customers", but yes it was a good idea to enforce service interfaces and forbid tight coupling at a architectural level.
- dahfizz 6y ago
  I think this is what you are referring to[1]. I don't think the goal is making everything externizable, I think the goal is just to have good api's everywhere. Easy productization is a side effect. [1] https://medium.com/slingr/what-year-did-bezos-issue-the-api-mandate-at-amazon-57f546994ca2 https://medium.com/slingr/what-year-did-bezos-issue-the-api-...
scarface74 6y ago
The underlying technology for AWS was developed internally and it was not customer facing at first. Will this myth ever die? https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/the-myth-about-how-amazon-s-web-service-started-just-won-t-die.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/the-myth-about-...
- justicezyx 6y ago
  I think the internal tech is definitely part of original AWS, but of course, quickly it grows beyond that, and the majority of aws has no relevance with other Amazon tech. But the statement is definitely right at the beginning. Plus, AWS no longer use such narrative anyway.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    No it never was. AWS was always built from the ground up to be an external service. A number of publicly available interviews say the same thing. https://www.se-radio.net/2014/12/episode-216-adrian-cockcroft-on-the-modern-cloud-based-platform/ https://www.se-radio.net/2014/12/episode-216-adrian-cockcrof... Edit: that’s not the right podcast. This was before he went to AWS. I can’t for the life of me find the interview.
- Tempest1981 6y ago
  Did Amazon internally dog-food it before it went public? Maybe that's the confusion.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    I can’t speak for how it worked in the past, but AWS and Amazon are run as two separate companies. AWS treats Amazon Retail just like any other customer and Amazon treats AWS like a third party vendor as far as choosing whether to adopt an AWS technology. But if someone with deeper insight than someone who has been working at Amazon/AWS for -3 days (I start Monday), I’m glad to be proven wrong.

7952 6y ago

Wasn't there an edict that amazon internal services have to be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. So even internal technology is designed with being customer facing in mind.

TheCoelacanth 6y ago
Does than mandate predate the creation of AWS?
- xxpor 6y ago
  According to the Yegge rant, it was some time around 2001/2002/2003, so yes. https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611
strgcmc 6y ago
There is no mandate that I'm aware of (not that I know everything about everything), but it's definitely the case that projects with "externalization potential" (making up a phrase out of thin air) will generally be more likely to get funded and prioritized (of course, why wouldn't they be preferred?). So, even without a mandate, the market forces at play in terms of proposing roadmap projects and choosing what to invest in, will naturally tend to favor those solutions with can pull double-duty (solve an immediate problem/pain-point that Amazon already has, and with a clear path/potential to be converted into or evolve into an external sell-able service too).
- bkanber 6y ago
  Here is Bezos' mandate from 2002. Quite prescient: https://jesusgilhernandez.com/2012/10/18/jeff-bezos-mandate-amazon-and-web-services/ https://jesusgilhernandez.com/2012/10/18/jeff-bezos-mandate-...
  - strgcmc 6y ago
    It's a little different from the idea of "all services must be something we can turn around and sell to customers", but yes it was a good idea to enforce service interfaces and forbid tight coupling at a architectural level.
dahfizz 6y ago
I think this is what you are referring to[1]. I don't think the goal is making everything externizable, I think the goal is just to have good api's everywhere. Easy productization is a side effect. [1] https://medium.com/slingr/what-year-did-bezos-issue-the-api-mandate-at-amazon-57f546994ca2 https://medium.com/slingr/what-year-did-bezos-issue-the-api-...

scarface74 6y ago

The underlying technology for AWS was developed internally and it was not customer facing at first. Will this myth ever die? https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/the-myth-about-how-amazon-s-web-service-started-just-won-t-die.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/the-myth-about-...

justicezyx 6y ago
I think the internal tech is definitely part of original AWS, but of course, quickly it grows beyond that, and the majority of aws has no relevance with other Amazon tech. But the statement is definitely right at the beginning. Plus, AWS no longer use such narrative anyway.
- scarface74 6y ago
  No it never was. AWS was always built from the ground up to be an external service. A number of publicly available interviews say the same thing. https://www.se-radio.net/2014/12/episode-216-adrian-cockcroft-on-the-modern-cloud-based-platform/ https://www.se-radio.net/2014/12/episode-216-adrian-cockcrof... Edit: that’s not the right podcast. This was before he went to AWS. I can’t for the life of me find the interview.
Tempest1981 6y ago
Did Amazon internally dog-food it before it went public? Maybe that's the confusion.
- scarface74 6y ago
  I can’t speak for how it worked in the past, but AWS and Amazon are run as two separate companies. AWS treats Amazon Retail just like any other customer and Amazon treats AWS like a third party vendor as far as choosing whether to adopt an AWS technology. But if someone with deeper insight than someone who has been working at Amazon/AWS for -3 days (I start Monday), I’m glad to be proven wrong.