Comment by alganet

1 month ago

From the technical perspective, I see Amazon as a platform first design. They're not shy about it, they embraced it ("we so totally overengineered our infra we now can rent it!"). It's so zombocomey that you can use it to zombocomify your own shit.

We should still call it "overengineering" and not "insight". It was a risk and a compromise.

4 comments

alganet

Reply
immibis  1 month ago

First they were a bookstore. The infrastructure came later.

  • alganet  1 month ago

    You can design something in such a way that the most important and relevant piece of the solution comes later. The order doesn't matter.

    Amazon is full of zombocominess. It's not a bad thing. The name itself is very zombo, _it can be anything_.

    The book selling is a great MVP for their final goal, a huge wide ass platform. It's all over the company history (what they bought, how the grew).

    You can design stuff in all kinds of weird ways. The first iPhone was a zombomachine. It had everything: it was a phone, it was an ipod, it was an internet device, it was a platform...

    Platforms are awesome and if you have the resources you should totally build with one in mind.