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Comment by bbreier | Hacker News Reader

AWS is not a common carrier

At their size, they sure seem like it.

What happens when AWS and Azure design their own silicon, outstrip other hosting providers, and then become the only hosts on the internet?

Are they common carriers then?

Nah, anyone can set up a host.

What does "outstrip" even mean? Physically ripping the silicon out from the servers in your garage?

It means overtake or outcompete. In this case they’re saying that the big cloud hosting providers could end up in a monopoly like position that smaller companies couldn’t compete with if they developed their own superior server tech.

Don't AWS, GCP, and Azure have the majority of the market already? What would them having their own silicon change?

Oh sorry, I’m not defending the point just explaining what outstrip meant in context of it.

Size doesn't have anything to do with it. No matter how big AWS and Azure get or what hardware they use, you can host a website out of a computer in your closet or the phone in your hand. No one needs them to operate, it's just convenient & cost-effective to do so.

This is a valid thought experiment to consider.

I'm old enough that racking my own boxes and hosting everything myself is both natural and easy (and cheaper and faster).

But working with plenty of young developers, most don't have any exposure or interest in setting up anything other than AWS services tied together.

So like it or not (I don't) we're rushing towards a world where AWS (maaybe GCP, mostly not) is the only way to build something.

It's good to consider the implications of this.

That’s not true though.

By volume, GoDaddy is actually a bigger host than AWS by a factor of 2.

The HN crowd vastly overestimates how big AWS is compared to less sexy options.

The difference is that AWS hosts big clients and makes big bucks in return. Godaddy's hosting had 300m in revenue[0], while AWS did nearly 13 billion[1].

0: https://www.zdnet.com/article/godaddy-q3-revenue-beats-expec....

1: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/02/aws-earnings-q4-2020.html#Bo....

It's definitely true that AWS customers spend more than Godaddy customers, for sure. But I still reject the idea that you have to use AWS (or will in the near future). There are literally hundreds of hosting providers out there, thousands if you include places that will run your own hardware. In my own career only half of my jobs have depended on AWS in any capacity; the rest used other hosting providers or self hosted.

In a very real way, a founder today has more options for hosting than they do for catered lunch.

Common carriers are regulated entities like shipping companies and telecoms. You get to be one through a huge amount of bureaucracy, negotiation with regulators, etc. It protects you from a lot of liability but also creates a lot of constraints on what you can do, what you can charge, etc. Either way, you don't just wake up one morning and discover that your company has become one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

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