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>> companies did IN FACT time share servers.

> 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

After the computer revolution of the 80s and 90s, timesharing was reserved for only the largest mainframes (you might see a bunch of people huddled around a large cage in an Exodus colocation). I stand by the fact that it was exceedingly rare.

Sorry, but this was the dominant computing model equivalent to renting servers at AWS. I'm not even talking about "website hosting at $5 per month". If a business wanted powerful machines, you rented them.

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.

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