[decwakeboarder]

S3 (or any object store) "is like FTP" has been the best explanation I've used. Way too many people I've talked to think that it's a POSIX-compliant filesystem and "like FTP" is familiar enough to them to know that treating it like a standard filesystem is a terrible idea.

[Goladus]

Yeah but just because a flawed analogy happens to work for people who are completely clueless about S3, doesn't mean you should deliberately misname your service to accommodate this lowest common denominator.

[tjr]

I did not read the article as literally suggesting that Amazon change the name of its service, but rather, as a means of conveying the crux of the idea behind the services.

I also did not take this particular description to indicate a literal FTP service.

Analogies do not have to be perfect to be helpful. I've never used Amazon web services, perhaps partly because I found their terminology too obfuscated to bother trying to figure out what it did. Similar services provided by other companies were more recognizable to me for what they were.

I found the post here helpful.

[Goladus]

I did not read the article as literally suggesting that Amazon change the name of its service

Neither did I. But it's flawed even as a rhetorical device. For that kind of thing to work for me, it would have to at least be plausible.