Amazon’s web services are now worth more than its entire retail operation – and growing three times as fastThe internet,in just two decades, has gone from something that seemed exotic to most people to a utility that is taken for granted – like electricity. Just as most people – at least in industrial societies – rarely fade through a day without switching on a light, or so most of us consume the internet every day. In that sense,it has become what historians of technology call a GPT – a general purpose technology, like steam power, or electricity,mass production and the automobile.
In 1999, Andy Grove, and then the CEO of Intel,was widely ridiculed for declaring that “in five years’ time there won’t be any internet companies. All companies will be internet companies or they will be dead. What he meant was that anybody who aspired to be in business in 2004 would have to deal with the internet in one way or another, just as they relied on electricity. And he was factual; that’s what a GPT is like: it’s pervasive.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com