double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

Before you get your knickers in a bunch I have to tell you that I don’t hate Google. I love Google. Sure, DoublePositive runs its systems on a Microsoft platform. Sure, we process millions of leads per month and capture hundreds of gigs of data on a weekly basis – all on a Microsoft foundation that is rock solid. But that doesn’t mean I am a Microsoft activist. Nor am I an Apple fanboi (yes, it is spelled with an ‘i’). Yes, I own an iPhone, and an iPod, and an AppleTV, and a Macbook, but not that craptastic Airport Express. In fact, as a technologist I love all these companies. But I love Google a little bit more. ;) I love the story, I love the logo, I love their clothing line, and I love the breadth of the work they do. However, Google is having their lunch eaten…by Amazon.

Amazon? I never saw any book sales on Google’s balance sheet? Oh, so you must be talking about Amazon’s announcement of its public release of the all-new and improved A9 platform for consumer use. I kid, I kid. Ok seriously, what I am talking about is that Amazon is kicking Google’s butt in one particular market. And that is the mindshare and market of software developers.

Sometime in the mid-2000’s someone at Amazon realized that the tools and processes they use internally could be valuable to the developer and business community. Starting with the release of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk in 2007 Amazon AWS was born. Ever since, Amazon has been on a tear, releasing valuable developer service after valuable developer service. At the same time (circa 1980) Google mashups were all the rage. Everyone wanted to have a Google maps mashup (ok, fine, it only feels like 30 years ago). Since then, however, Google for the developer community has been stagnant. Between that stupid ‘by invite only’ setup, and a series of Google mishaps (Google Wave, Google Voice Search, Google Phone, no cloud computing, etc.) Google is losing the battle for the mind of the business software developer. There is no way I can possibly present a full analysis on the two companies with respect to their developer mindshare strategy without writing a book. Instead, here is my non-comprehensive and biased comparison chart:

Amazon Services vs. Google Services

A lot of what you see above may not be important to you or your business. But that’s not the issue. The issue here is that Amazon has first mover advantages in almost all of the areas listed above. At first I thought most of the Amazon advantages only applied to small or nimble companies like DoublePositive. However, the more CIOs I talk to, the more are using Amazon. Cloud Computing and large-scale storage are not fun to implement nor are they easy to manage. Lots and lots of companies, big and small are willing to pay a premium just to offload the headache. Additionally, Amazon is churning out high quality services at a rate that Google cant match. Google is stuck in perpetual beta mode and can’t get out of its own way. So what does all this mean for Google and Amazon? I don’t know. I do know that everyone I talk to is jumping on the Amazon bandwagon as fast as they possibly can. From the largest of companies to the newest of startups, Amazon is taking more and more developer mindshare. What I do know is that Amazon is transforming itself into the go to business partner for growing and nimble business while Google is continuing down the path of B2C dominance. Can the two coexist peacefully? Will their paths converge and turn into a battle for the ages? How does Microsoft fit into this picture? It’s going to be a great story to watch. I need some popcorn.

P.S. Here are some projects that we implemented using Amazon:

1. Large scale file management (hundreds of millions of files)
2. DNS
3. Geographical load balancing
4. Data Cubing
5. Quality Control on repetitive tasks
6. B2B database building
7. System backups
8. Image tagging
9. Transcription Services