Funny to see a blog post from 2006 explaining how Amazon designs their entire business processes outside-in or "backwards" as they call it.

Amazon's new deal with Waterstones helps them combat the Microsoft-funded Nook.

Test Drive Begins Beta Rollout on Android Phones ^^^ Amazon Appstore Developer Blog

"While it's true that both Pinterest and Instagram are not making great advances in science and technology, that is more indicator of the easy power of today's commodity environments rather than a sign of Silicon Valley's lack of innovation. The numbers are so huge and the valuations are so high we naturally want some sort of fundamental technological revolution to underlie their growth. The revolution is more subtle. It really is just that easy to attain such growth these days, if you can execute on the right idea. Get used to it."

Impressive growth for a company with 12 people. Database sharding is some sort of evil magic, isn't it?