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Amazon's cloud business is competing with its own customers

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Re: Amazon's cloud business is competing with its own customers

#71

Post by mbesto »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #43
mbesto wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Terrifying times out there for starting a software company. - High free cash flow businesses that other traditional industries salivate over - Unlimited rapid scalability - Virtually no up front computing costs and virtually elastically tied to usage growth - Limited vendor lock-in Yes, truly terrifying. /s

- No personnel, pay/benefits, recruiting or technological advantage over FAANG - No speed to scale advantages over FAANG - No rapid scalability outside of a FAANG owned platform - No advantage in new/exiting/upcoming technologies or verticals that FAANG doesn't already have projects in All the advantages you identify also reside natively inside FAANG, while they have no barriers to scale, with a larger sales force an…

Your overall premise of "There is nothing that prevents AWS from using it's own systems as business intelligence for creating their own competitive products." is spot on. But characterizing the situation as "terrifying" seems just a little bit disingenuous. It's a double edged sword.

All of the factors you mentioned are characteristics of any fortune 500 business. Are you familiar with the Innovator's dilemma?

> - No personnel, pay/benefits, recruiting or technological advantage over FAANG

Says who? Don't people leave FAANG companies all of the time because they realize they have technological advantages or don't have the right people? Good example - Otto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_(company)

> - No speed to scale advantages over FAANG

So let's ignore the agility and nimbleness associated with startups then? Isn't that precisely why so many software startups have been created in the last 15 years?

> - No rapid scalability outside of a FAANG owned platform

Microsoft would like to have a word with you. Ok snarky I know...I get your point. But, the rapid adoption of cloud is creating more and more cloud providers. Since lock-in is less of a problem which means we're getting more vendors with equally competing offers (just look at Equinix, Flexential, Digital Ocean, Linode, Pivotal, Rackspace, etc...just to name a few). Why do you think Azure/AWS/GCP all keep lowering their prices?

> - No advantage in new/exiting/upcoming technologies or verticals that FAANG doesn't already have projects in

What does this even mean? If a FAANG company doesn't have a project in the new/exciting/upcoming technology but you do and you prove the commercial value, then you absolutely have an advantage, no? You're there first! If, as you point out in your original post, FAANG sees that your offering has commercial value (they see more people adopting your technology) then they have to catch up to you anyway. You have a new competitor now, sure, but that is going to happen regardless of whether AWS exists or not. Is it a problem because they have the intelligence to approach the market quicker...sure. Not to mention, your ability to scale was already provided by them! Ultimately, you're complaining that the company that helped provide the scale is now competing against you? Boohoo. If this becomes such a huge problem than another provider will come along and create a "we won't compete against you" policy and change the market. I just don't see why that's such a problem.

> All the advantages you identify also reside natively inside FAANG

I think you've just proven my point. There is a level playing field when it comes to the technology services available to startups. FAANG's have a capital advantage and startups have an agility advantage. There's obviously a lot more nuance to that, but this isn't a terrifying situation at all.

Re: Amazon's cloud business is competing with its own customers

#72

Post by Nasrudith »

talawahdotnet wrote: post #39
softwaredoug wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder with Amazon if we’re seeing a failure mode of Apache and BSD licenses, and if the future OSS might trend back towards more aggressively being copy left... or some place in between.

I really hope not, the fact that all of these services are based on OSS software is what will help keep Amazon in check as they grow, because at the end of the day if AWS starts to turn into Oracle and get abusive with their pricing/licensing then the customer has a lot more leverage to move to another cloud or self host. To me, the fact that AWS is basing all their services OSS is a good thing for consumers. The tho…

It is essentially a case of letter vs spirit - using it unmodified doesn't require a contribution. I never got hired by Amazon but I believe their work is technically schema and configuration. No license I am aware of calls for such radical transparency.

Re: Amazon's cloud business is competing with its own customers

#73

Post by ocdtrekkie »

fipple wrote: post #34
cddotdotslash wrote: post #22

The trend I've noticed is that AWS makes a lot of very half-baked services that appear to compete with third-parties, but provide about 10% of the features and usability. Maybe they're hoping that's enough for the bulk of users (and maybe it is), but from what I've seen, if you want to do anything serious, you still have to use a third-party. Take CloudWatch for example. It's technically "competing" with Splunk, Data…

This is not unique, it is the “integrated” vs “best of breed” offering. It’s like the oldest business school IT case. Amazon isn’t trying to sell the best anything, they’re selling one spot where you can get everything you need even if some of it is crappy.

This makes a lot of sense because most of us aren't going to work with a different company for each and every part of our infrastructure. If it's super critical it be the best, I'm going to seek out the right tool for the job. If I just need to have something, at a basic level, I'd rather work with a company I already work with.

Re: Amazon's cloud business is competing with its own customers

#74

Post by ianmcgowan »

scarface74 wrote: post #60
CrazyPyroLinux wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with crony capitalism is the crony part, not the capitalism part. So I agree that laws (usually passed by people with more self-interest than understanding) are almost never the optimal solution, by definition. Trouble is that we don't actually have a true free market, so the question becomes what is the best real-world solution, given the distortions/limits of the existing system?

I trust the capitalist a lot more than the government. Capitalist are motivated with making money the transparent way - people give them money and they give people goods and services. The government is ruled by cronyism and even worse cow tow to people’s worse instincts, superstitions, and prejudices.

I like money as much as the next person, but your statement could perhaps stop at "Capitalist are motivated with making money" and still be mostly true. The other parts are optional.

The function of government is to make sure those other parts happen - that the capitalist doesn't take the money and not provide the goods (the courts, the police) or provide goods in one place at a low price by dumping toxic shit in another hurting people (EPA), tell you lies and get you to invest in their firm (SEC) or a million other examples. The burden in burdensome regulations is in the eye of the beholder.

Also remember that (at least in a democracy) we are the government. If you don't like what they're doing, vote the bums out. It's a little harder to vote out the plutocrats.

Re: Amazon's cloud business is competing with its own customers

#75

Post by dana321 »

cddotdotslash wrote: post #22

The trend I've noticed is that AWS makes a lot of very half-baked services that appear to compete with third-parties, but provide about 10% of the features and usability. Maybe they're hoping that's enough for the bulk of users (and maybe it is), but from what I've seen, if you want to do anything serious, you still have to use a third-party. Take CloudWatch for example. It's technically "competing" with Splunk, Data…

Somebody noticed! I thought it was just me.

Even their API interfaces are dated and cumbersome to use.

Re: Amazon's cloud business is competing with its own customers

#76

Post by scarface74 »

ianmcgowan wrote: post #74
scarface74 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I trust the capitalist a lot more than the government. Capitalist are motivated with making money the transparent way - people give them money and they give people goods and services. The government is ruled by cronyism and even worse cow tow to people’s worse instincts, superstitions, and prejudices.

I like money as much as the next person, but your statement could perhaps stop at "Capitalist are motivated with making money" and still be mostly true. The other parts are optional. The function of government is to make sure those other parts happen - that the capitalist doesn't take the money and not provide the goods (the courts, the police) or provide goods in one place at a low price by dumping toxic shit in ano…

We are not a democracy. We are at best a Republic. A democracy would be one vote one voice. But in the Senate, there are two Senator for Wyoming (population 540,000) that have the same vote as the two Senators from California (population 39 million +). On top of that you have gerrymandering.

If you live in a populous city in a populous state your vote is worth much less than someone who lives in a rural city in a less populous state.

You’re also assuming as a fact that the court system and the police are not corrupt and can be trusted...

Re: Amazon's cloud business is competing with its own customers

#77

Post by mbell »

thefounder wrote: post #48
talawahdotnet wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree that AWS should do a better job of contributing back to OSS communities both in terms of code, money and man hours, however I don't think most ppl appreciate that a lot of AWS' secret sauce just doesn't make sense to open source even if they wanted to. They build their own custom nitro ASICs to integrate with KVM, for networking, storage, security, etc. That code doesn't make sense anywhere but AWS. The…

What about DynamoDB? I'm pretty sure they could open source a lot but they just don't want. Google had the same pathetic excuse when asked why they don't open source appengine or datastore.

> What about DynamoDB?

From what I recall DynamoDB is a somewhat hacky API layer over a bunch of MySQL clusters. I'm not sure anyone would, or should, attempt to use a non-managed version of it.

Re: Amazon's cloud business is competing with its own customers

#78

Post by wmf »

talawahdotnet wrote: post #35
amasad wrote: post #15

That's why I think MongoDB's new license which prevents AWS etc from hosting as a service without open sourcing makes sense ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18229452 ). Amazon barely contributes anything back to the community and is known for destroying OSS businesses.

I fully agree that AWS should do a better job of contributing back to OSS communities both in terms of code, money and man hours, however I don't think most ppl appreciate that a lot of AWS' secret sauce just doesn't make sense to open source even if they wanted to. They build their own custom nitro ASICs to integrate with KVM, for networking, storage, security, etc. That code doesn't make sense anywhere but AWS. The…

That's why MongoDB's SSPL license is kind of disingenuous: they don't really want the source code to AWS; they want to get paid. The Commons Clause is more honest about getting paid.

Re: Amazon's cloud business is competing with its own customers

#79

Post by cthalupa »

amasad wrote: post #15

That's why I think MongoDB's new license which prevents AWS etc from hosting as a service without open sourcing makes sense ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18229452 ). Amazon barely contributes anything back to the community and is known for destroying OSS businesses.

Amazon just open sourced the hypervisor used for Lambda and Fargate ( https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker )

When the Spectre/Meltdown hit, Amazon also open sourced the mitigation used for the AWS version of Xen ( http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/xsa254/README.vixen )

If you search the Linux git commits for people with @amazon emails, you'll find contributions, bug fixes, etc.

I don't think it's fair to say that barely anything is contributed back.

Re: Amazon's cloud business is competing with its own customers

#80

Post by becauseiam »

Dunedan wrote: post #63
ForHackernews wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck self-hosting DynamoDB and your AWS Lambdas...

There are DynamoDB Local[1] and AWS SAM CLI[2], both from AWS, which allow you to self-host DynamoDB and AWS Lambda functions. ;) That said, I agree with your argument, but found it rather funny that you just picked two AWS services you can indeed run locally. [1]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerg... [2]: https://github.com/awslabs/aws-sam-cli/

DynamoDB is really only good for testing since it uses SQLite underneath.
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