
Prime Leverage: How Amazon Wields Power in the Technology World - tim333
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/technology/amazon-aws-cloud-competition.html
======
gk1
(Full disclosure: I was interviewed for this article and work with several of
the companies mentioned.)

Software startups _should_ be worried about AWS (and "Big Cloud" in general),
especially those in the AI/ML, serverless, stream processing,
containerization, IoT, data warehousing, and batch processing space. Those are
the fastest growing cloud services and AWS knows it.

I wrote about this at length and suggest ways to punch back:
[https://www.gkogan.co/blog/big-cloud/](https://www.gkogan.co/blog/big-cloud/)

One retort I've seen from AWS defenders is: If AWS is so bad for startups,
name _one_ startup that was killed by AWS?![0]

Two problems with this argument:

1\. Most startups die in a whisper, not a bang. They fail before ever making a
name for themselves in the market. And I happen to know that this journalist
had no issues finding startups that failed or struggled, but _did_ have issues
getting them to speak on the record. Because who wants to be the loser in the
story?

(And yes, I _do_ know several companies that were doomed because of the
challenges mentioned in my essay.)

2\. The startups that _do_ come to mind easily--the same ones the AWS
supporters show as proof that there's a level playing field--only do so
because they managed to reach significant market- and mind-share before AWS
swooped in. By now they're large enough to be able to chug along a while
longer despite the intense (and arguably unfair) competition. Their survival,
however, is far from certain.

[0] Example: [https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/amazon-isnt-killing-
your-...](https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/amazon-isnt-killing-your-
business-you-just-suck-at-it/)

~~~
taurath
There is no possibility to ramp up a new technology from slow to fast. You
must go fast and huge out of the gate, or else AWS will drop in after 6 months
and take most of your addressable market before you've even got off the
ground. You're too slow when Amazon will put a team of 40 against your 5
person startup. And unlike Google/Hooli, they have a good chance of not
screwing it up.

Almost every one of the vendors at the AWS reinvent expo this year that have
an "advantage" in AI, data insights, etc, will be competing with an AWS
service by next year. Snowflake, Datadog, Splunk, etc. All the innovation in
the room gets sucked up by the big company and offered at scale. The best you
can hope for is to have a better UX and a brand that people will demand.

The ones who will need to worry less are the ones who already have contracts
with enterprise businesses. Relationship rather than technology companies.

~~~
deanCommie
> You're too slow when Amazon will put a team of 40 against your 5 person
> startup.

That part is not true.

Amazon/AWS bootstraps new products much as a startup would - with teams of
5-10 max.

I acknowledge the difference in runway availability and radically different
risk of failure.

But the actual dev teams are small.

------
sergioro
Amazon's approach to open source software seems fairly simple to me:

    
    
        if non-restrictive license
           sell it to customers
        else
           fork the project, rebrand it, and sell it to customers
    

a very efficient strategy.

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ctvo
I understand the difficulty of trying to simplify very nuanced issues for a
general audience, but The Times did a particularly poor job here.

Open-source software isn’t hard to explain: free software created in the open
by many contributors with licenses on how it can be used.

From there: Amazon targets open source projects widely used with licenses that
allow it to offer management of the software deployment as a service. This
directly competes with some start-up models that rely on an open source
license to draw in users, then offering them auxiliary services.

~~~
tracer4201
It sounds like these companies need to license their product so another
company cannot enhance or modify the software and resell it. I don’t know the
legal framework well enough to know how difficult that is, but it sounds like
that’s what companies have started doing.

On a side note - the NYT has a piece on any one of the tech companies about
every single day. No doubt these companies do questionable things, but I
question the Times motives and biases when they’re focused so much on one
industry or a handful of companies. I spent almost two decades working in oil
and gas before shifting my career to software in 2012. I don’t recall a time
when the the Times was hyper focused on my industry then. Not that it excuses
FB or Amazons behavior, but I do believe the Times has a personal interest in
seeing these companies fail, as they compete with the Times.

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brentm
Using "copy" as the description of what Amazon did in the opening paragraph
sets the tone of what they are trying to do here. Open Source is not even
mentioned until most people have stopped reading.

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Jeff_Brown
Economist here, wondering how to measure the net gain or harm. If more useful
open-source ideas used to be generated by companies hoping to profit from
ancillary services like product support, and now those innovators have
retreated because they expect Amazon to poach their ideas, then that's harm.

But quantifying the generation of useful ideas is hard. Moreover that harm has
to be weighed against the benefit Amazon brings to the users of AWS.

------
known
[http://archive.vn/OyFKv](http://archive.vn/OyFKv)

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rickncliff
This is ridiculous; so Amazon aren't supposed to use open source software or
offer services that compete with startups?!

It's suspect when papers side with accusers and adopt their rhetoric
wholesale, this kind of advocacy delegitimizes all their other reports IMO.

