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Re:Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox by strgcmc on Friday June 26, 2020 @01:44PM (#23654749)
There is no mandate that I'm aware of (not that I know everything about everything), but it's definitely the case that projects with "externalization potential" (making up a phrase out of thin air) will generally be more likely to get funded and prioritized (of course, why wouldn't they be preferred?).

So, even without a mandate, the market forces at play in terms of proposing roadmap projects and choosing what to invest in, will naturally tend to favor those solutions with can pull double-duty (solve an immediate problem/pain-point that Amazon already has, and with a clear path/potential to be converted into or evolve into an external sell-able service too).

Re:Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox by bkanber on Friday June 26, 2020 @03:10PM (#23655767)
Here is Bezos' mandate from 2002. Quite prescient: https://jesusgilhernandez.com/2012/10/18/jeff-bezos-mandate-...
Re:Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox by strgcmc on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @11:10AM (#23690842)
It's a little different from the idea of "all services must be something we can turn around and sell to customers", but yes it was a good idea to enforce service interfaces and forbid tight coupling at a architectural level.