Who’s afraid of Jeff Bezos? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who’s afraid of Jeff Bezos?

#41

Post by temuze » Thu, Oct 17, 2013, 5:18 AM UTC

beautybasics wrote: post #7

Larry-Sergey & Google is far more feature proof company Amazon - Solves easy problems at large scale Google - Solves complex problems at large scale

Yeah, Amazon is a super easy problem. Let's try to make a website that sells everything. We'll only need to get every manufacturer under the sun to sell under us and make a system is compatible with all other theirs. Heck, we can easily make a big ol' warehouse system that stores every single freaking product known to man-kind and make it profitable. Super easy.

Oh, and getting your customers to become more loyal to you? Easy peazy. Combine those little warehouses with two day shipping literally anywhere in the United States and offer it to customers for under a hundred bucks a year. Trivial optimization problem, if you ask me.

And Amazon Web Services? Pbbbt. Just get some servers and make software that separates them into virtualized storage, computing, DNS, long-term storage, etc into different sizes and make the uptime not suck. That's like CS101

Don't even get me started on the Kindle. Just switch your entire focus from eCommerce and other industries to hardware and make a tablet and integrate it with your other media services (music, video, books, etc) and offer it for cheaper than anyone else. Super easy.

#shitthatHNsays

Re: Who’s afraid of Jeff Bezos?

#42

Post by jordanthoms » Thu, Oct 17, 2013, 5:18 AM UTC

area51org wrote: post #28

Not much new here — who doesn't already realize this — and Heroku does not belong on the list of EC2 competitors, given that they actually host on EC2. There's a big difference between IaaS and PaaS.

Well, AWS has been making moves more towards Heroku PaaS territory with elastic beanstalk, rds, etc.

Re: Who’s afraid of Jeff Bezos?

#43

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Oct 17, 2013, 5:19 AM UTC

ankitml wrote: post #39

selectiveshift wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of what Amazon does, does not compete with technology companies. In the few places they do, they're not a juggernaut. Since when is AWS not a juggernaut...

Rackspace is slowly eating AWS up. Their customer service is unmatchable.

I've found their customer service to be great, but pathetic from a technical perspective (i.e. they're very nice and apologetic when shit goes south, but its still going to be a while before they figure out how to fix it).

And slowly eating up AWS? No. That's Digital Ocean eating the lower end of the market. Rackspace outsources their CDN to Akamai, and their Cloud experience is damn near abysmal.

Re: Who’s afraid of Jeff Bezos?

#44

Post by agotterer » Thu, Oct 17, 2013, 5:19 AM UTC

gbog wrote: post #16

forkandwait wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google -- solved a single very important problem really well by applying a well known tool (SVD and graph networks) to a novel example, also made android, otherwise not very exciting. Furthermore, brick and mortar problems are hard -- things break, rot, get lost, require staff to move them around, etc. Not to poo-poo Google or any other pure software company, but it isn't harder because its on a computer, it's actual…

> not very exciting So you are "unexcited" by Glass, Loons, Earth/map/streetview, Go, etc.?

And lets not forget self driving cars

Re: Who’s afraid of Jeff Bezos?

#45

Post by robryan » Thu, Oct 17, 2013, 5:20 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #27

It's a good question: who in technology is afraid of Bezos? While a lot of technology leaders might admire Bezos for his leadership of Amazon, I wonder how many fear him. Most of what Amazon does, does not compete with technology companies. In the few places they do, they're not a juggernaut. For example, despite years of effort, the Kindle Fire has not significantly harmed the market share or margin of the iPad. Goo…

Anyone trying to sell products that they don't manufacture themselves. Even if you do make things amazon might be a very important distribution channel.

Re: Who’s afraid of Jeff Bezos?

#46

Post by jordanthoms » Thu, Oct 17, 2013, 5:23 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #36

forkandwait wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google -- solved a single very important problem really well by applying a well known tool (SVD and graph networks) to a novel example, also made android, otherwise not very exciting. Furthermore, brick and mortar problems are hard -- things break, rot, get lost, require staff to move them around, etc. Not to poo-poo Google or any other pure software company, but it isn't harder because its on a computer, it's actual…

>also made android This is a common misconception. Google didn't "make" Android. They acquired it by purchasing Android, Inc.

At an early stage, and incubating them for years before they told the world what they were working on.

Re: Who’s afraid of Jeff Bezos?

#47

Post by jmduke » Thu, Oct 17, 2013, 5:23 AM UTC

temuze wrote: post #41

beautybasics wrote: post #7

Larry-Sergey & Google is far more feature proof company Amazon - Solves easy problems at large scale Google - Solves complex problems at large scale

Yeah, Amazon is a super easy problem. Let's try to make a website that sells everything. We'll only need to get every manufacturer under the sun to sell under us and make a system is compatible with all other theirs. Heck, we can easily make a big ol' warehouse system that stores every single freaking product known to man-kind and make it profitable. Super easy. Oh, and getting your customers to become more loyal to…

Amazon and Microsoft solve business problems.

Google solves information problems.

Twitter and Facebook solve communication problems.

So many of these silos have similar solutions, but approaches are so incredibly different that it can be difficult to compare them at first blush.

Re: Who’s afraid of Jeff Bezos?

#48

Post by curiouslurker » Thu, Oct 17, 2013, 5:25 AM UTC

I will make the bold claim that within 10 years amazon will fall apart at the seams like a cheap suit in a storm. You cannot run a non profit forever no matter how large your market share is or how obsessed you are about customers.

The culture (from what we can glean from the excerpts of the new book on Bezo's) is also toxic and is unlikely to produce an enduring successful company. Senior execs can't pass gas without Bezos' permission? When he steps down, there is unlikely to be the continuity that produces great enduring companies.

Re: Who’s afraid of Jeff Bezos?

#49

Post by justinsteele » Thu, Oct 17, 2013, 5:28 AM UTC

ankitml wrote: post #39

selectiveshift wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of what Amazon does, does not compete with technology companies. In the few places they do, they're not a juggernaut. Since when is AWS not a juggernaut...

Rackspace is slowly eating AWS up. Their customer service is unmatchable.

Do you have a source? From conversations in my tech groups, it seems people are moving away from Rackspace. Not to AWS specifically. Either way, I wouldn't have made the statement originally as I don't have any proof and I'm curious if they both released active customer #s that I missed?

Re: Who’s afraid of Jeff Bezos?

#50

Post by dboat » Thu, Oct 17, 2013, 5:32 AM UTC

saosebastiao wrote: post #35

beautybasics wrote: post #7

Larry-Sergey & Google is far more feature proof company Amazon - Solves easy problems at large scale Google - Solves complex problems at large scale

Solves easy problems at large scale I would love to see you in an Amazon interview. 80% of the interviewed melt down in the middle of it because they can't solve a problem that is 10 orders of magnitude easier than the problems they would be tackling on the job.

Well, I was going to say something similar, but I really just think he means Amazon's problems are easy compared to googles. That being the point, I don't think his phrasing is worth taking issue over.