The homepage of Amazon in the US has had a makeover. But apart from the public face of the company which is very well known, hardly seen is what goes on behind the scenes in Jeff Bezos’ empire. As such it was fascinating to read the personal impressions of a former Amazon developer published some weeks ago:
"I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I’ve been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies — an impression that has been reinforced almost daily — is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right.
Sure, it’s a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one. It’s pretty crazy. There are probably a hundred or even two hundred different ways you can compare the two companies, and Google is superior in all but three of them, if I recall correctly."
After a preamble like this it's hard to believe that the bulk of the diatribe is actually pro-Amazon and a strong criticism of Google. This is because Amazon is one of the very few online companies who have mastered the conversion to platform based thinking:
"This effort was still underway when I left to join Google in mid-2005, but it was pretty far advanced.
From the time Bezos issued his edict through the time I left, Amazon had transformed culturally into a company that thinks about everything in a services-first fashion.
It is now fundamental to how they approach all designs, including internal designs for stuff that might never see the light of day externally."
Jeff Bezos has also tried to explain this service-oriented platform approach to the shareholders.
Because the platform topic is so critical for long-term success, our K5 Conference had a dedicated program block for this topic, including amongst others, a presentation from Philip Rooke on the API strategy of Spreadshirt as well as Marcel Weiss’ presentation on social web patterns.
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
