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> how Amazon got ahead in cloud hosting really gives me pause. I think EC2 happened because Amazon expanded by building data centers. Whenever they finished a
by wmil 12y ago
> how Amazon got ahead in cloud hosting really gives me pause.
I think EC2 happened because Amazon expanded by building data centers. Whenever they finished a new one they found they had a lot of surplus hosting capacity that they couldn't monetize.
So EC2 was useful because the capacity was just sitting there.
Google always had ideas for new services. So they saved any extra capacity for experimental products or tried to sell it through Google App Engine.
- eldavido 12y agoI talked to some Amazon product managers, they said the narrative was closer to "we had to learn how to scale to meet the holiday shopping season" than "we had a bunch of extra capacity laying around". It's not a big leap of faith, look at how much business retail chains do over the holiday season, and imagine operating an e-commerce platform of Amazon's scale - you learn how to do elastic infrastructure pretty quickly, esp. with Bezos's legendary cheapness (doors for desks, etc.)
- xentronium 12y agoOff-topic, but door-desks aren't really cheap at all. Great recount by an old time employee: http://glog.glennf.com/blog/2011/10/16/the_true_story_of_the_amazon_door-desk http://glog.glennf.com/blog/2011/10/16/the_true_story_of_the...