Revolutionizing File Distribution
One doesn't normally think of Amazon as a web services kind of company. Sure, they have a web service interface to their online store, but that's just facilitating the primary purpose of Amazon which has primarily been retail sales. Their A9 web search is interesting, but I haven't followed it very much. Cloning Google, Yahoo, and MSN is fine, but not very interesting.
But as sure as Yahoo is into retailing and Google is trying to get into retailing, Amazon is serious about pushing web services. Witness the new S3 web storage service. Full REST and SOAP interfaces, a relatively cheap charge model for storage space and bandwidth. Not only can you host anything you want, but wonder of wonders, they include automatic BitTorrent support for distributing your files and at the same time minimizing your bandwidth. This is an area that Google at least definitely wants to go into. That Amazon of all people has beaten them to the punch with a simple, well documented storage service and API has got to be embarrassing.
But it's a fantastic thing for the Web. It's not going to be long before we see some truly innovative uses of this service.