[hn_throwaway_99]

The problem I have with these renamed is that by "simplifying" the name, they often cut out major pieces of functionality. The original names are at least "brandable" so that when I think of that name, I think of the entire suite of functionality. Some examples:

1. IAM -> Users, Keys and Certs. But other commenters have already pointed out this leaves out the whole roles, permissioning and policies that is really the core of IAM.

2. S3 -> Amazon Unlimited FTP Server would imply to me that S3 actually just follows the FTP protocol, which is totally false.

3. Lambda -> AWS App Scripts. I have news for the author, but I know some companies and architectures that use Lambda as a basis for an entire serverless infrastructure, a heck of a lot more than "little scripts", e.g. serving whole websites.

4. Cognito -> Amazon OAuth as a Service - except many companies use it to store plain user accounts (e.g. username and password), not just setting up OAuth for accounts managed elsewhere.

5. SNS -> Amazon Messenger. But SNS can be used for a lot more than just sending emails, texts or push notifications. For example, it can be used to trigger lambdas. "Notification Service" seems to much better encompass the generic nature of the notification handling that SNS provides.

[chrsig]

I can certainly agree that some of those descriptions don't fully encompass what you're getting. Some of your points are more picking at the authors choice of simplifying language, rather than the effort to simplify the names themselves.

Some of the names are completely uninformative though -- cognito for example doesn't convey anything about oauth. Neptune doesn't make me think graph database. Kinesis doesn't make me think distributed log. Redshift doesn't make me think analytics database.

I think my personal issue with aws naming is that they've run out of three letter acronyms. So I have to remember is EKS the kubernetes service, or the hosted kafka service?

[dylan604]

>Some of the names are completely uninformative though

Does Microsoft make you think computer OS? Does Apple make you think of computers and personal devices? Do common names Alexa/Siri mean anything specific to you?

None of the words used in those examples have anything to do with what they do, but they are now synonymous with everything you think of when those words are spoken/written. That's because the companies have spent time developing them as brands. AMZN through AWS has just come up with names so that they can be discussed more easily. They haven't really spent time with ad agencies running lifestyle campaigns for them.

I also think it falls into "I don't use something enough to fully remember what it does". However, is anyone reading this really not aware of what S3 does? EC2? Those are the basics where pretty much anyone starts with. Sure, not everyone will need EKS and it becomes more esoteric, but people that do it day-to-day know exactly what EKS is.

[chrsig]

I get the point, that with sufficient branding to a target audience, the issue is negated, but I think you're conflating branding for a corporation with branding for niche products. The level of effort put into branding the corporation at large versus the level of branding for any individual service is orders of magnitude apart.

Importantly, with AWS, there's dozens of services, all competing for a three letter address space. It's getting saturated, so it's easier and easier to get confused.

> Sure, not everyone will need EKS and it becomes more esoteric, but people that do it day-to-day know exactly what EKS is.

This is sort of my point. I work with kubernetes and kafka. The kafka instance that I connect to is managed, the k8s cluster I deploy to is not. I can't tell you off the top of my head if EKS is managed k8s or managed kafka. That was the breaking point for me to stop putting effort into trying to remember.

I have pretty severe ADHD, so I can accept that I'm probably outside a standard deviation as far as ability to remember three letter acronyms, but I think I still stand as a contradiction to your assertion.

[hypertele-Xii]

Huh? Microsoft is almost literally microprocessor software. Sounds pretty descriptive to me.

[dylan604]

I had intended to add Windows to that, but my brain-to-typing-fingers skipped over it. The word "Windows" tells me nothing about what it does in the "same contenxt" as what's being discussed here. We've just had that crap shoved down our gullets for all this time it has become synonymous with software operating system not because the word is descriptive of purpose.

[hypertele-Xii]

Disagree on that too, the concept of movable "windows" into programs is quite descriptive also. What else would you call it? Programmable Rectangles? Subscreens?

[syshum]

>Does Microsoft make you think computer OS?

No, because it is Company not an OS. And today I bet more people associate Microsoft with Xbox, or Office then with Windows. Windows has been Microsoft's least profitable division for awhile now. The OS is their loss leader

> Does Apple make you think of computers and personal devices?

No, Apple makes me think of Cringe Hippies over spending on an poorly engineered fashion statement... ;) Or prime example of a company claiming to be environmentally friendly while actively designing their products to have to be thrown away instead of repaired...

>AMZN through AWS has just come up with names so that they can be discussed more easily.

I dont think that is true at all, even in tech circles trying to remember what the different service names are is pain.

Amazon AWS took a look at Microsoft, the worse company in the world at naming things, and said "Hold my beer"

>>However, is anyone reading this really not aware of what S3 does? EC2?

S3, probably not but it is also the oldest product and has become Standard Standard Cloud based Object Storage, S3 while an AWS service is also a protocol adopted by countless other services, and open source projects.

EC2, Yes I better there are those that do not know what EC2 is, or that to use EC2 you need EBS. And the deeper you go the more complex the web of services become.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> Some of the names are completely uninformative though -- cognito for example doesn't convey anything about oauth.

That's kind of the point, though. A "brandable" name is something that generally evokes what the service does, but is not so limited that it only specifies the exact features at the time of initial release.

I mean, by the author's logic, Amazon itself should have been called Internet Book Store. Which name do you think would have been more successful?

[paulddraper]

Moreover, even the paradigm of S3 is different then a filesystem. No directories, no file renames.

S3 is an object store. Give it a key and up to 5TB of data and it will store it.

(Yeah, you can translate one to the other, see AWS Transfer. But they are different.)

[derefr]

> Amazon Unlimited FTP Server would imply to me that S3 actually just follows the FTP protocol, which is totally false.

In fact, it's much closer to a WebDAV server!

[codegeek]

Yea I agree mostly. They could have explained a bit differently. For example, it says that S3 Should have been called Amazon Unlimited FTP Server. That is definitely over simplifying it. S3 stores objects and a regular FTP server is just a server with files. I would explain S3 as "Kinda like an SFTP server but you get to add encryption, versioning, tagging, metadata to files when they get uploaded"

[fomine3]

Just curious why Amazon combines push messaging service and pub/sub service to SNS.