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"It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful." Out of c

"It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful." Out of curiosity, what do you think Amazon is driven by, fundamentally? I'd put them right up there with Apple on the product innovation front.

qq66 16y ago
Data.
DavidSJ 16y ago
Customers. [Edit: I worked at Amazon Web Services until recently. Now work at Google. Concern for customers drives everything that happens at Amazon, sometimes to a ridiculous degree.]
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  I'm interested to hear how that professed dedication to customers squares with the experiences of sites like reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_down_for_6_of_the_last_24_hours/c1l6ykx http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_d...
  - te_chris 16y ago
    This was addressed well by someone from Netflix but I can't find the link. Basically he said that Reddit weren't so much the victim of AWS rather than the victim of not understanding the product enough and not spending enough to buy the right instances and thus ensure their constant performance. The guy from Netflix justified this by the way that the different sized instances are split across their respective hosts and, surprise surprise, if you buy the bigger instances you get more of each machine host and less threat of someone taking you out.
    - redthrowaway 16y ago
      If that were true, you'd think that would be the first thing they were told when they started complaining about crashes a year ago. Certainly, you'd think by the time they had talked to the CIO, somebody would have said, "you guys need to buy bigger instances". We know money isn't a problem for reddit anymore, and all current and former employees have said the problems with EBS just aren't something they can fix by throwing money at. I would suggest the guy from netflix simply doesn't know enough about reddit's particulars to offer an informed opinion. Either that, or he knows better than everyone at reddit, every support person at amazon, and even the CIO of amazzon how best to solve reddit's problems. I strongly suspect the former.
adambyrtek 16y ago
> I'd put them right up there with Apple on the product innovation front. Could you elaborate on that? I can think about only two potentially innovative products coming from Amazon. 1. Kindle. The business model is definitely innovative, but the device itself had a cold reception. The modern versions are much better, but still don't reach the Apple level of polish. 2. AWS. Extremely innovative, but targeted to a relatively small population. This is definitely not a mainstream product. I intentionally skip the innovations in streamlining the shopping experience, because I don't feel it's relevant to the comparison to Apple.
- ippisl 16y ago
  Amazon's main strength is building platforms for other businesses , and innovating business models. their product innovations are just tools to build platforms. You can see this from a list of their innovations: 1. amazon fulfillment services. 2. the affiliate marketing method. 3. 3rd party sellers arena, used book selling arena inside their own store. 4. the kindle - a digital platform for many authors and publishers. the physical kindle is not that hard, just look on how many e-readers are there. 5. aws - a good product, but also an innovative business model.

qq66 16y ago

Data.

DavidSJ 16y ago

Customers. [Edit: I worked at Amazon Web Services until recently. Now work at Google. Concern for customers drives everything that happens at Amazon, sometimes to a ridiculous degree.]

redthrowaway 16y ago
I'm interested to hear how that professed dedication to customers squares with the experiences of sites like reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_down_for_6_of_the_last_24_hours/c1l6ykx http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_d...
- te_chris 16y ago
  This was addressed well by someone from Netflix but I can't find the link. Basically he said that Reddit weren't so much the victim of AWS rather than the victim of not understanding the product enough and not spending enough to buy the right instances and thus ensure their constant performance. The guy from Netflix justified this by the way that the different sized instances are split across their respective hosts and, surprise surprise, if you buy the bigger instances you get more of each machine host and less threat of someone taking you out.
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    If that were true, you'd think that would be the first thing they were told when they started complaining about crashes a year ago. Certainly, you'd think by the time they had talked to the CIO, somebody would have said, "you guys need to buy bigger instances". We know money isn't a problem for reddit anymore, and all current and former employees have said the problems with EBS just aren't something they can fix by throwing money at. I would suggest the guy from netflix simply doesn't know enough about reddit's particulars to offer an informed opinion. Either that, or he knows better than everyone at reddit, every support person at amazon, and even the CIO of amazzon how best to solve reddit's problems. I strongly suspect the former.

adambyrtek 16y ago

> I'd put them right up there with Apple on the product innovation front. Could you elaborate on that? I can think about only two potentially innovative products coming from Amazon. 1. Kindle. The business model is definitely innovative, but the device itself had a cold reception. The modern versions are much better, but still don't reach the Apple level of polish. 2. AWS. Extremely innovative, but targeted to a relatively small population. This is definitely not a mainstream product. I intentionally skip the innovations in streamlining the shopping experience, because I don't feel it's relevant to the comparison to Apple.

ippisl 16y ago
Amazon's main strength is building platforms for other businesses , and innovating business models. their product innovations are just tools to build platforms. You can see this from a list of their innovations: 1. amazon fulfillment services. 2. the affiliate marketing method. 3. 3rd party sellers arena, used book selling arena inside their own store. 4. the kindle - a digital platform for many authors and publishers. the physical kindle is not that hard, just look on how many e-readers are there. 5. aws - a good product, but also an innovative business model.