

O'Reilly on "Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing" - razorburn
http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/10/web-20-and-cloud-computing.html

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mdasen
There's an interesting note about amazon in there: "if Amazon intends to gain
lock-in and true competitive advantage. . .".

The thing that's missing is any history of Amazon going for lock-in. In fact,
Amazon looks like the anti-lock-in company. They allow their competitors to
sell in their site, used products to be sold alongside their new products,
etc. The closest thing to lock-in that Amazon has tried is Amazon Prime in
which you pay for 2-day shipping in a lump sum rather than as you go.

Amazon's business has always been about efficiency and high-volume, low-
margin. I don't see why their hosting business would end up different. In
fact, Amazon seems perfectly comfortable with companies like RightScale
selling on top of them.

~~~
bayareaguy
_In fact, Amazon seems perfectly comfortable with companies like RightScale
selling on top of them._

Just because Amazon has nothing to fear from their customers doesn't mean the
reverse is true - Amazon just announced they are starting to add the kind of
monitoring and management features to EC2 which RightScale provides, making
EC2 more attractive and forcing RightScale to do more to differentiate
themselves.

