When Amazon came out with real reviews, it seemed crazy to many at the time -- like why would you want to share bad things about your products on your own website? I thought it was awesome.
Amazon's customer review system was created as a barrier to entry for competitors, as much as anything else.
Perhaps I'm remembering my/people's reaction to first seeing reviews on Amazon.
Which is to say there’s a sense in which you’re right and a sense in which this is an absurd statement..
I believe Grid5000 did it before Amazon [1].
It opened in 2005 and allowed users to automatically book hardware (with OAR [2]) and install their own images (with Kadeploy) on dedicated hardware.
[1]: https://www.grid5000.fr/w/History [2]: https://www.grid5000.fr/w/Getting_Started#Reserving_resource...
There's nothing absurd about the way Amazon and Apple defined cloud computing and smartphones. They deserve as much credit as anyone for the services / products we know today as cloud computing and smartphones. The version of the smartphone that took off in sales, took over the culture and has become a human staple globally, was entirely defined by Apple's iPhone. No other company did that, it was Apple, period. To not recognize them as the prime mover of smartphones would be absurd.
Absolutely. You’ll note that the OP’s word choice was invented - defined would indeed be appropriate and not at all absurd.
Perhaps, but you didn't get them right (nobody did so far).
> 1-Click
Reminds me of the guy who invented "half-click" buying, i.e. you buy on the mousedown event.
“Amazon is what it is because of invention. We do crazy things together and then make them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “If you do it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. That yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive. When you look at our financial results, what you’re actually seeing are the long-run cumulative results of invention. Right now I see Amazon at its most inventive ever, making it an optimal time for this transition.” "
Here's the quote.