The Biggest Thing Amazon Got Right: The Platform

Google engineer Steve Yegge was trying to start a robust internal discussion, not post a viral hit, when he published a 4,570-word self-styled rant about what he sees as the company’s greatest flaw to Google+. Unfortunately for Yegge, he didn’t check the settings and shared his view on Google’s failure to grasp platforms over products—including Google +—with everyone. He later pulled it down on his own accord but he and Google aren’t asking that the copies already spread across the net be deleted.

The basic question he raises is an important one: has Google put its future at risk by failing to become a true platform company, rather than just the provider of a series of widely used products? Yegge’s case is built on a contrast with Amazon, his previous employer. Nearly a decade ago, he says, Jeff Bezos became worried about Amazon’s shrinking profit margins and ordered all his engineering groups to treat their projects as services: they should be built with a common set of APIs to make them accessible to other Amazon developers, who would in future be able to assemble new products out of these various component parts.