[wpietri]

I think you're misunderstanding. I read it as "they could just as well not be servers". It could be Diamond Age rod logic. It could be processing implemented on quantum foam. It could be gnomes. The point is that from the user's perspective, they no longer have to think about servers.

[robotresearcher]

Sure, I get it. But we already have that idea.

The whole idea of a server is to abstract away the details of the upstream computer and its software stack, so the user can think of it only as a provider of an abstract service. The irrelevance of their implementation as a host, VM, box, rack of boxes, pool of quantum foam, string and sparkles, is already built into the concept.

We all know that there's no unique process that is http://amazon.com. It's a service, provided by a (vast distributed) server.

[wpietri]

You use "server" to mean "a vast array of servers"? I don't think I've heard that before.

[robotresearcher]

I'd say that http://amazon.com is the address of Amazon's web server, yes. Does that sound wrong?

[wpietri]

I don't think I have ever heard anybody use "server" to mean "lots of servers". Perhaps "web site" or "service" or "cluster" or even "load balancers" depending on whether they want to talk about what they provide or what does the providing.