Is Amazon a bigger innovator than Google?
Jun 24, 2020
39 Comments
Reading an old (2018) post by Steve Yegge, and seeing the growth Amazon keeps experiencing over the years, up to its skyrocketed stock price it has acquired after Covid, I think it really has become the winner among the big techs.
Here's the post: https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/google-doesnt-necessarily-need-innovation-95cea96d0eeb nothing special by itself
It seems like Google is the best at making devs life comfortable, with great tooling, wlb and infra, but fails short of innovation compared to Amazon (and other companies).
I think that at this point it's crazy that Google still has such a great reputation, as you can see for example by its dominance on Blind polls...
Google doesn't necessarily need innovation
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With that said, there are plenty of opportunities for Google to innovate more, and surpass Amazon. Online grocery shopping and free 1 day shipping will be major drivers of growth for Amazon, but they're innovative only in the sense that they give consumers better options, not in the sense that they're creative new ideas.
So Google can far surpass Amazon if they're capable of delivering results. Waymo, for instance, is a massive opportunity. But they need to become a commercial success before being touted as innovation.
Autonomous driving isnโt useful unless you have EVs though. 18 moving parts in an EV vs 2000+ in ICE means significant maintenance cost savings, and million mile batteries exceeding standard 200k ICE mileage plus cheaper electricity vs cost of gas is what would bring autonomous driving to a price point that would capture most of the market.