[byoung2]

You don't build a business on someone else's warehouse

From the article:

A software platform is truly a foundation on which entire businesses can be built. It encompasses not just a technical infrastructure but also a user experience framework, usually some form of a selling channel, and a defined large-scale developer ecosystem

If that isn't the very definition of Amazon, I don't know what is. In theory I could build an entire business on top of Amazon's infrastructure (and not just a software business). I could have outsourced labor write or edit content using Mechanical Turk. I could publish it using Amazon's self-publishing tools. I could sell it through Amazon's marketplace or on an ecommerce site hosted on AWS. I could collect payments using Amazon FPS. I can ship products using Fulfillment by Amazon. You most certainly can build a business using someone else's warehouse, just as Heroku and RightScale can build businesses on someone else's datacenter. Fulfillment is a service, but is is a PaaS - a robust logistics platform as a service.

[ja2ke]

I read the article. This thread started with "S3/AWS aside." I think "Amazon" isn't a platform because it's not a single thing ("Facebook"), but Amazon offers a number of services which can be used in concert. Maybe those are actually the same in practice, but they exist in different spaces in my brain.