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Comment by zimbatm | Hacker News Reader

Not really. Amazon just builds what they need instead of depending on others and then sell it as a service to the larger market. Remember, they're playing for the long-run. Maybe they needed it to convert their videos on LoveFilm.com or maybe another future service connected with their Cloud Drive.

What is also means is that if your company provides a service to other developers you might well be in competition with Amazon in the future.

EDIT: Maybe I should mention that I work at PandaStream, another video transcoding service. We're still cheaper with 100% utilisation but our pricing model and target market isn't exactly the same.

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>>>Amazon just builds what they need instead of depending on others and then sell it as a service to the larger market

Yes. But I don't recall reading anywhere that Amazon would or even could offer this. It makes me wonder what else there is they will sell. Warehousing software? Shipping logistics? Anyone have a list?

Everything that counts are infrastructure. If you're providing a service that other developers build on you're going to compete with Amazon in the future.

Not only developers. They are also upending all intermediary businesses between manufacturers and consumers (inventory, shipping, etc).

Amazon already offers warehousing and shipping as a service, even if you don't sell your products on Amazon: https://developer.amazonservices.com/gp/mws/api.html/180-311...

You ship them a pallet of stuff, and then use a web API to ask items to be delivered to addresses.

Oh, they really have an API for everything. That's awesome. Now... I wonder if there are companies in China that have an API to order a pallet of stuff?

Re: could

Amazon has offered streaming video for years now. This is just a guess on my part, but they probably don't receive video from studios in a stream-friendly format. Their streaming format has also likely been updated over the years.

This is a strange question - Amazon can offer anything that can be thought of by the human mind and can be shown to make some money. It's a competitive world. I'd fully expect Amazon to do anything and everything their staff can come up with. Perhaps in a few years when the space industry takes off maybe even run a space / orbital freight service. It makes sense for them.

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