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I like this definition, but I think it breaks down even if you're not trying to be clever. AWS is a tech company. Amazon is not a tech company, it's a retail st
by philipov 5y ago
I like this definition, but I think it breaks down even if you're not trying to be clever. AWS is a tech company. Amazon is not a tech company, it's a retail store. But AWS isn't actually an independent company, it's just a division of Amazon. So we've got a retail store hiding a massive tech company because the retail store is even more massive.
I think this is less a flaw of the definition and more a sign that Amazon should be broken apart and AWS spun off as an independent company.
- phil_e_delphian 5y agoI generally agree with you here, since it seems like "tech" or "not tech" should be based on services actually provided (ie selling physical books online isn't really tech). Except, many of these companies have a second, b2b service that they're cultivating as a goal unto itself: customer attribution, identification, aggregation, etc. Companies like goPuff (or Amazon, but Amazon has a hand in everything so is more complicated for this example) have a core "not really tech" service of online ordering of human-delivered goods, but they are actively working to turn all of those engagement/sales/preferences info into a packaged product they can sell to brands and marketing companies, which is at its core, data aggregation and analytics as a service...so "kinda tech"?