[alexatalktome]

The alternative story told internally is that the predecessor to AWS originated from a white-label storefront offering sold to traditional retailers entering the digital world in the early 2000s.

Edit: Target, Borders (the late bookstore) and gap were example users. It was called merchant.com (website url now redirects).

Supposedly AWS came about when merchant.com and the main site became hard to manager resources for, so they were broken out into services and APIs a la AWS.

[vineyardmike]

Here is a good history of this for those interested. I had to search after seeing this.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/02/andy-jassys-brief-history-...

I think more companies should look at selling their internal core-competencies to outsiders. It would make starting and managing businesses easier for everyone.