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I've said it before, I'll say it again: ( http://swombat.com/2011/2/22/predictability-of-closed-platforms http://swombat.com/2011/2/22/predictability-of-closed

by swombat 16y ago

I've said it before, I'll say it again: ( http://swombat.com/2011/2/22/predictability-of-closed-platforms http://swombat.com/2011/2/22/predictability-of-closed-platfo... ) > I would argue that only one thing is entirely predictable about closed platforms: they will do whatever is in the business's interest. When building your business on someone else's platform, you should always assume that if it is in the platform owner's interest, they will shut you down tomorrow with no warning. > So, you need to do two things at the very least: > 1. Ensure your goals and the platform owner's goals are always in harmonious agreement. > 2. Have a backup plan for what happens if your access to the platform is revoked tomorrow. > People seem to keep learning this lesson over and over again... with Facebook, with Twitter, and these days with Apple... And these days, with Amazon?

jasonkester 16y ago
Agreed. It's generally a bad idea to build your entire product around a missing feature in the Big Guy's thing. The surprising thing about Amazon, however, is that they've gone out of their way to be the exception to that rule over the last 4 years. JungleDisk was the posterchild for "business that will only last until Amazon incorporates their product as a feature", and yet it continued to survive as Amazon released infrastructure product after infrastructure product. And in the few cases where they did move into a space where somebody had built something, they did it delicately and cooperatively. They really were the Good Guy. I'm hoping that this was just the one space that so obviously needed filling from a Company Strategy perspective that they're making an exception in this case. They've built up a lot of goodwill. It'd be a shame to see it squandered.
- mseebach 16y ago
  JungleDisk isn't a missing feature in Amazons product, it's a full product in it's own regard, and as thus, Amazon doesn't have a clear way of shutting them down or are even in a particularly beneficial position to compete with JungleDisk. Also, JungleDisk already competing against a whole slew of worthy competitors, some of which run on S3, some of which don't.
zmmmmm 16y ago
Which is all the more poignant because at a higher level here we have Amazon confidently building on Google's platform, in direct competition with Google's own services, knowing they can do so without prejudice. Amongst all the argument about "open"-ness and what it means, whether it's source code or something else - for me this is the important part. If a competitor can build on a platform and safely do so in competition with the interests of the platform owner then that platform is "open" in the real sense that matters.
tybris 16y ago
I don't think that's quite comparable. Contrary to platforms like Google App Engine or iOS, the core infrastructure AWS offers is sufficiently open and commonplace that you wouldn't have such a hard time moving away from them in the unlikely event that they'll throw you out. This is simply a case of a much more classical business dilemma: a big company decides to build a product that competes with your small company. The somewhat strange thing about this case is that the big company is also providing the infrastructure for your small company so they win regardless of whichever product wins, but not at the cost of the small company's ability to build a better product.
- Someone 16y ago
  The other side of that coin is that, if it is easy to move somewhere else, Amazon does not have that special of a product. If that is the case, how are they going to compete? Both price and quality are options, but even those are forms of lock-in, if they keep customers in-house.

by swombat 16y ago

jasonkester 16y ago

Agreed. It's generally a bad idea to build your entire product around a missing feature in the Big Guy's thing. The surprising thing about Amazon, however, is that they've gone out of their way to be the exception to that rule over the last 4 years. JungleDisk was the posterchild for "business that will only last until Amazon incorporates their product as a feature", and yet it continued to survive as Amazon released infrastructure product after infrastructure product. And in the few cases where they did move into a space where somebody had built something, they did it delicately and cooperatively. They really were the Good Guy. I'm hoping that this was just the one space that so obviously needed filling from a Company Strategy perspective that they're making an exception in this case. They've built up a lot of goodwill. It'd be a shame to see it squandered.

mseebach 16y ago
JungleDisk isn't a missing feature in Amazons product, it's a full product in it's own regard, and as thus, Amazon doesn't have a clear way of shutting them down or are even in a particularly beneficial position to compete with JungleDisk. Also, JungleDisk already competing against a whole slew of worthy competitors, some of which run on S3, some of which don't.

zmmmmm 16y ago

Which is all the more poignant because at a higher level here we have Amazon confidently building on Google's platform, in direct competition with Google's own services, knowing they can do so without prejudice. Amongst all the argument about "open"-ness and what it means, whether it's source code or something else - for me this is the important part. If a competitor can build on a platform and safely do so in competition with the interests of the platform owner then that platform is "open" in the real sense that matters.

tybris 16y ago

I don't think that's quite comparable. Contrary to platforms like Google App Engine or iOS, the core infrastructure AWS offers is sufficiently open and commonplace that you wouldn't have such a hard time moving away from them in the unlikely event that they'll throw you out. This is simply a case of a much more classical business dilemma: a big company decides to build a product that competes with your small company. The somewhat strange thing about this case is that the big company is also providing the infrastructure for your small company so they win regardless of whichever product wins, but not at the cost of the small company's ability to build a better product.

Someone 16y ago
The other side of that coin is that, if it is easy to move somewhere else, Amazon does not have that special of a product. If that is the case, how are they going to compete? Both price and quality are options, but even those are forms of lock-in, if they keep customers in-house.