Amazon.com andthe Next Generation of

Computing

Tim O'Reilly www.oreilly.com

May 20, 2003

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What We Really Do• "Big Hairy Audacious Goal": Changing

the world by capturing the knowledge of innovators

• That is: Find interesting people and technologies and amplify their effectiveness by spreading the information needed for others to follow them.

• Keep finding new, transformative technologies that we can catalyze.

Watching the "Alpha Geeks"

"The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet."

-William Gibson

Watching Amazon• 1997: A friend tells me she's

buying a computer to use Amazon. That was the original definition of a "killer app."

• But people were still thinking of the web browser as the application, and so they didn't think of Amazon and its peers as applications.

Paradigm Shift: A Change in World View That Calls Everything You Know Into Question

Killer Apps of the Internet

Not Just Software: "Infoware"• Editorial content as part of the

user interface• Users help to build the product• The product changes every day• The Internet, not the PC, is the

platform

Software as Service

Von Kempelen's Mechanical Turk

A History Lesson• Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, the killer

apps of the personal computer era, are displaced by Microsoft Excel and Word

• Netscape Navigator, the killer app of the first Internet era, is displaced by Microsoft Internet Explorer

• A platform strategy beats an application strategy every time!

Technology Evolution• Hackers push the envelope.• Entrepreneurs make things easier for ordinary

users.• Dominant players integrate into a platform,

raising barriers to entry. Progress stagnates, as hackers and entrepreneurs move on, looking for new frontiers.

Or (sometimes)• The industry builds a healthy ecosystem, in

which hackers, entrepreneurs and platform players play a creative game of "leapfrog". No one gets complete lock in, and everyone has to improve in order to stay competitive.

AmaBooks

Amazon Web Services• An explosion of creativity as

Amazon opens its data for reuse by others.

• A business model that creates a virtuous circle of increasing sales.

• Amazon becomes even more definitively the source for product information and ecommerce.

Web Services Demos• Rob Frederick• Jeff Barr

Coming Soon: Proof that Amazon is Now a Technology Platform

Two Types of Platform• One Ring to Rule Them All

• Small Pieces Loosely Joined

Small Pieces Loosely Joined• An architecture of participation means that your

users help to extend your platform.• Low barriers to experimentation mean that the

system is "hacker friendly" for maximum innovation.

• Interoperability means that one component or service can be swapped out if a better one comes along.

• "Lock-in" comes because others depend on the benefit from your services, not because you're completely in control.

Questions?• Need not just be about the talk• For more information:

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