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I feel like Amazon doesn't get nearly the mind-share they deserve for doing really awesome stuff. They've been up on the front of so many technology curves it's silly.

We kind of take for granted what they do since, you know, it's a store. But they're in search, they're heavy into data analysis, they've innovated in interfaces, payment processing, they've had community generated content since before we called it that, they've pulled off one of the most effective infrastructure platforms, they're redefining publishing and content distribution. And they have a great reputation for customer service.

Another thing I like about Amazon is that I have a pretty good idea of what they're collecting all of my data for and it's something that I'm pretty comfortable with.

I feel like they kind of get left out a lot of times when people are thinking about serious online innovation.

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they're heavy into data analysis

That's what I've enjoyed about Amazon for years. I like going back to Amazon to see the books it recommends for me based on patterns it finds in my purchases and the purchases of other customers with overlaps with my purchases. And of course that increases revenue for Amazon, so that is smart all around.

How many companies do something totally amazing... twice?

Amazon has done it more than twice. They do it consistently and across their three core businesses.

I just mean in a general sense: e-commerce and now the cloud.

But they're both sides of the same coin for Amazon. They had to build up this infrastructure for their own use, and that's why they can do cloud hosting so efficiently. It's like when they had a9, which was a pretty cool search engine (I used it for a while); they've naturally got a really hard-core search engine in house that works on rich data just for their own mountain of data. It's the same for most of the other stuff that they've done.

I really think Amazon parallels Google in innovation, but they've somehow stayed much less sexy in the hacker world. I suppose it's that Amazon hasn't needed to make "we're smart people" one of their selling points.

I see what you mean about the infrastructure, and its a good point.

But as to love for Amazon... I dunno, most hackers I know have disdain for Google at this point, and much love for Amazon. But then... I am cloud obsessed, and this influences who I associate with :)

Amazon enables us. Google... not so much.

I completely agree. Just imagine Google announcing these same services... I would think that there'd be a massive amount of "Google Will Soon Host All the Internet" articles, and other such grandiose things. Like you said, Amazon is one of the largest innovators in tech, and they don't get remotely as much coverage as they should.

I guess the lesson is: A company's reputation, especially with the media, has a huge influence on the success of their products. So, try to be a media darling like Google or Apple.

Apple and Google have a long list of failed products that at least in apple's case was hyped by the media.

Here are some other facts about the two companies: Yesterday, APPL closed at 112.71, and GOOG at 362.74.

I still think getting positive publicity about a product makes that product more likely to succeed, and that there's not much harm in being a media darling.

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