Before AWS, companies did IN FACT time share servers. The whole mainframe model was that IBM owned the server and you only rented a couple of hours on it.
But before WeWork, people also rented office space. WeWork is not the first company to offer rentable office space to workers. They're not breaking new ground here.
Ok. It was so uncommon that I didn't encounter it for the 15 years preceding AWS. It's like pointing to a car that runs on vegetable oil. Yes there are IN FACT cars that run on vegetable oil, but nobody does it statistically. This is much different than the chance that a business (with income) is renting commercial space. Yes your local mom and pop pool company doesn't rent an office (and that's a non-trivial amount of businesses, as I've worked for some), but they aren't going to rent space in WeWork anyway.
For an extreme example, here's a shared hosting company that's been around since 2002: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/hosting
> Ok. It was so uncommon that I didn't encounter it for the 15 years preceding AWS.
That just shows that.. you may not have enough experience. Time sharing was the norm before personal computers.
Some good reading here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
Companies didn't own mainframes, generally. Your understanding of "exceedingly rare" is incorrect. The statement that AWS invented the rented server model is also incorrect.