[daveguy]

> What exactly would the alternative have been in 2006?

Well, WebDAV (Document Authoring and Versioning) had been around for 8 years when AWS decided they needed a custom API. And what service provider wasn't trying to lock you into a service by providing a custom API (especially pre-GPT) when one existed already? Assuming they made the choice for a business benefit doesn't require anything close to a conspiracy theory.

And it worked as a moat until other companies and open source projects started cloning the API. See also: Microsoft.

[PunchyHamster]

WebDAV is ass tho. I don't remember a single positive experience with anything using it.

And still need redundant backend giving it as API

[QuercusMax]

When I was in school, we had a SkunkDAV setup that department secretaries were supposed to use to update websites... supporting that was no fun at all. I'm not sure why it was so painful (was 25 years ago) but it left a bad taste in my mouth.

[debugnik]

WebDAV is kinda bad, and back then it was a big deal that corporate proxies wouldn't forward custom HTTP methods. You could barely trust PUT to work, let alone PROPFIND.

[orf]

When S3 launched the core API could be described with 4 requests. It was (and still mostly is) super simple.

Saying they should have used WebDAV instead shows a lack of knowledge on your end rather than theirs.