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Conglomerates Didn’t Die, They Look Like Amazon

nytimes.com

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Re: Conglomerates Didn’t Die, They Look Like Amazon

#61

Post by skookum »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #58
throwaway2048 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a persistent myth that needs to die, AWS was not built to host their websites, and indeed did not do so for many years after it was established. AWS wasnt their "spare capacity" nor was it them exposing their internal systems to the world so they could sell them off, It was developed from day one as a public facing service.

AWS was built to host Amazon. Sure, it was a public facing service first , but AFAICT Amazon.com was always the primary target customer, and probably still is. AWS was built based on the needs and experience for hosting Amazon.com.

The experience of hosting and scaling Amazon may have informed some early AWS thinking but AWS was not built specifically to host Amazon and Amazon was never the primary target customer. This is evidenced by nothing more so than by the fact that despite Amazon's prescriptive initiative to move to AWS being well over 5 years in[1], much of retail & digital still runs on Oracle, dedicated HW, and bespoke internal services.

To make the statement today that Amazon "probably still is" the primary target customer betrays a lack of understanding of the scope of AWS and IaaS in general.

[1] It might be even 8+ years. I don't recall when it officially started so using 5+ as a very conservative estimate.

Re: Conglomerates Didn’t Die, They Look Like Amazon

#62

Post by specialist »

nitemice wrote: post #20
stirlo wrote: post #5

Ben Thompson has a great take on this... https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-new-customer/ Essentially amazon develops services and buys the best customer for said services to ensure they get used.

This is a really amazing and clever idea on Amazon's part: Taking a system or technology that you've already built and are maintaining, and make it accessible to others as a platform. Then continue using that platform as if you were a/the best customer. They did it with AWS, they've done it with their retail business, and now they're probably going to do it with AmazonFresh/WholeFoods. It makes a lot of sense, and it…

Eli Goldratt's The Goal popularized two main ideas. Theory of constraints and transition from production to services (subscriptions, or both).

Many, many have tried to transition to services. Amazon figured it out.

I was totally invested in Sun's grid computing vision, so I was very slow to recognize AWS. We already had VMs on servers and I couldn't wrap my head around virtualizing everything. It just seemed like so much monkey motion (too much work).

Even so, AWS is slowly, painfully recreating grid computing. By bundling up those services. But unlike Sun, AWS found an incremental path, with many, many ways to monetize along the way.

Re: Conglomerates Didn’t Die, They Look Like Amazon

#63

Post by Retric »

supercanuck wrote: post #52
throwaway2048 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a persistent myth that needs to die, AWS was not built to host their websites, and indeed did not do so for many years after it was established. AWS wasnt their "spare capacity" nor was it them exposing their internal systems to the world so they could sell them off, It was developed from day one as a public facing service.

I think it is you who is incorrect https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3161246

Your misunderstanding that comment. It was built "in the same datacenters by the same IT engineering team" but it was always it's own thing. "AWS services were quickly adopted by many teams" after it was built and a commercial product.

Sure, the intent was Amazon IT would eventually move to that system. But, they could let other companies work out the issues first vs. risking their main website. Just consider the risk for them if AWS goes down and take their own site outline while they are trying to sell high up time. That's simply a risk they had no reason to take.

PS: Remember, well executed traditional large scale infrastructure has higher up-time than AWS because AWS adds complexity.

Re: Conglomerates Didn’t Die, They Look Like Amazon

#64

Post by icantdrive55 »

adventured wrote: post #46
amagumori wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i agree! in fact, you know what would be a really efficient form of capitalism? what if we just eliminated wage regulation, and the marginal costs of workers to our business entirely, by making them slaves!

> what if we just eliminated wage regulation, and the marginal costs of workers to our business entirely, by making them slaves! Your premise is incorrect and historically ignorant. Slaves are net more costly and drastically less efficient than free employees. George Washington, among numerous other slave owners of the time, for example wrote about that fact indepth. The net cost of workers skyrockets and their produ…

Why enslave someone when they will happily take your crappy job?

Drive for for Uber, temp work driving your vechicle for Amazon, writing/posting for Facebook, and even here--on Hacker News? (Hasen't made money, but the goodwill/potential must be staggering?)

Let's face it, unless you have a very high barrier to entry profession, like brain surgeon, actually bad choice--I know one that happened to be in the resturant business, or one did until her resturant burned down, without property insurance I add.), or have family money to take risk; life in America is not great.

I don't want to argue. I know some of you in tech are very happy right now. Let see what happens when letitgo, and buystufffromagayman--yea, it exists; I thought it was a tv parody, goes bankrupt.

I don't have any answers, but some of what Trump promised sounded good.

We are in a crisis. We need to allow those that are looking at being homeless a safe place to pitch a tent. We need to lighten up on all municipal regulations/fees/fines, and tie all those regulations/fees/fines to annual income. It shouldn't be illegial to pitch a tent on county property.

We need to reduce the supply of eager workers. (I don't know how anymore. There's to many people that will work for free, and pride themself's on it.

And the big one----taxes on the wealthy? Let's put it this way, if you want to take the irritating parts of your Spaceship overseas; move yourself, and your family right along with the savings. Really--sell that mansion, pull the kids out of private school, and Move.

I'll stop my rant.

Re: Conglomerates Didn’t Die, They Look Like Amazon

#65

Post by CuriouslyC »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #12
arvidkahl wrote: post #3

Amazon has found their way to cornering the one property that is not influenced by fashions and whims: scarcity. Both in a logistical and economical sense, they have been pushing the envelop on all corporate levels, from AWS to fresh produce. To me, most of the "new and more agile" companies are cargo-culting the optimization paradigm, focussing on time-saving and convenience as if the more basic needs were already m…

> that people are perfectly fine with Amazon being a conglomerate What is this supposed to mean? Is there supposed to be something inherently not-fine with a conglomerate? If conglomerates survive because they're better able to deliver goods and services more efficiently then great. As another comment pointed out[1], we are surrounded by conglomerates.[2] Other conglomerates that have delivered things people love inc…

From the perspective of the voting/idealistic shareholder, conglomerates make it very difficult to influence the activity of a company, since any individual activity is a small portion of their makeup.

Another problem with conglomerates is that big players compete in nonproductive ways. Large companies tend to actively lobby and influence regulations. The goal is generally to protect their business model (by limiting innovation), and it has been shown to have a very high return on investment. Having a broad base also gives conglomerates a lot of leveraging points in negotiations as well.

Conglomerates also concentrate your failure points in the economy. Infrequent major failures are more painful than frequent minor failures. Besides, companies should not be "too big to fail."

On the other hand, when conglomeration increases efficiency, it can be a good thing. As a result, if a market is stable and further innovation unlikely, conglomerates can be better for society than independent competitors, assuming sufficient competition to limit profit.

Re: Conglomerates Didn’t Die, They Look Like Amazon

#66

Post by CuriouslyC »

bottled_poe wrote: post #8
noobermin wrote: post #6

While prices are low, another aim of governments should be to keep wages high enough to maintain a standard of living. I think the fear around Amazon isn't that it is going to all of a sudden raise the price of goods from Whole Foods, but that they will reverse the employee friendly aspects of the company. When prices are low but wages aren't high enough to guarantee that people can take advantage of those lower pric…

> another aim of governments should be to keep wages high enough to maintain a standard of living Disagree. The aim of government should be to enable the elimination of every single job while also enforcing a fair distribution of wealth. Wage regulation is a traditional capitalist approach to solving this problem. There are other approaches which might need to be tried in the coming decades..

The goal shouldn't be to get rid of jobs - people need something to do since we made surviving so easy. The goal should be to improve the quality of people's jobs.

Re: Conglomerates Didn’t Die, They Look Like Amazon

#67

Post by wott »

Well, when a company has various activities, the direction/management decides that a company must focus on a single activity ("focus on a single trade and be expert in it, delegate the rest" is then their motto).

Then when a company has a single activity and is an expert in it, the direction/management decides that a company must have diverse activities, be it vertical integration to decrease the costs, or horizontal integration to reduce competition, or just invest/acquire in totally unrelated sectors to eliminate risk.

And then back to step one, and so on.

The only constant goals in all this seem to be:

1. to justify firing employees and lowering working conditions;

2. to generate artificial activity for all the direction/business/finance sector, so that they always feel both useful and powerful.

Re: Conglomerates Didn’t Die, They Look Like Amazon

#68

Post by ImaginaryIP »

It's exciting to be an engineer at Amazon because of the broad range of business problems it tackles and how easy it is to move among teams. If you want to pivot into video streaming, cloud computing, data science, etc., you can easily find a mentor. It makes me feel like personal ambition is my only limit (which is both daunting and exciting).

Re: Conglomerates Didn’t Die, They Look Like Amazon

#69

Post by Spooky23 »

stirlo wrote: post #5

Ben Thompson has a great take on this... https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-new-customer/ Essentially amazon develops services and buys the best customer for said services to ensure they get used.

He's basically saying that Amazon is a big logistics company. Except he calls it meat as a service.

It's an interesting take. But it is also how many analysts thought that Walmart would kill grocery stores. I personally don't think that Amazon will fare much better than Walmart... shopping for groceries is fundamentally harder online, and Amazon hasn't demonstrated any magic that makes that easier.

Re: Conglomerates Didn’t Die, They Look Like Amazon

#70

Post by daemin »

gedrap wrote: post #42
indigochill wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another side of that which I've noticed as an American expat. If one country or industry decides to keep wages high, there are at least two effects. 1. The minimum required experience is also increased. You see this in industries where it's very difficult for new blood to break into because the minimum required experience/skill level is above an "entry level" position because the pay expectations of the indu…

>> industries where it's very difficult for new blood to break into What are examples of such industries?

The canonical example is in Medicine: Doctors, Surgeons, Dentists. All of these professions have strict professional bodies which limit the number of people that can enter them, therefore be it intentionally or not, the wages are kept high.
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