[jcampbell1]

I didn't mean it as an analogy, but there are plenty of examples if you are looking for Google vs startup. Twitter/Buzz, Groupon/Google Offers, Facebook/(Whatever Google's Social Strategy is).

5 years to clone a product that Google already has the infrastructure for and is within Google's core mission seems excessively long.

[ma2rten]

How is this within Google's core mission? Their mission is not to provide IT services to other companies...

[jcampbell1]

I'll spell it out very clearly:

Google's mission is "to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Gmail helps my company organize our email and communication, and makes it accessible from any computer anywhere in the world.

S3 helps my company organize our information and distribute it around the world.

S3 helps dropbox organize their users information and make it accessible from any device.

An S3 clone is clearly within Google mission.

[bad_user]

Gmail is a product, S3 is a piece of infrastructure used by other products.

Google's mission is also to make money, companies make money by focusing on their core strengths. I would rather have Google not clone other people's products, Microsoft did that and they failed over and over again.

S3 may help you organize your information, but that information is probably not public, and if it is then Google's services can access it anyway - they also aren't a charity - if you're looking for charity (i.e. products released for the betterment of the world only) then you need to search for non-profits.

[bkudria]

S3 is most definitely a product. They charge for it, don't they?