What started out as an idea to extend only Amazon's core capabilities as a service to other retailers transformed into a challenge to extend even the core of the core, which was the digital backbone infrastructure. Maybe this can be a tl;dr of the whole article.

Such business philosophies require companies to unselfishly give up developed competitive advantages and provide that as a service to the entire industry. Imagine if this same philosophy was implemented at other companies: the past-time heavyweights would be serving a far higher calling today. And entire industries of innovations of would have picked up and developed on where the old left off.

Examples like Intel offering the capabilities of its foundries or Kodak offering its patents to filmmaking or Microsoft offering others to build on its Office Doc format would have prevented both their fall and promoted the industries to greater heights.