Steve Yegge surfaced recently by inadvertently making a public post on the foibles of Google compared to his experience at Amazon. Well worth the read, some interesting data points for me:

1. Bezos, for all the disparaging, demonstrated vision and strength of will to force Service Oriented, Platform style approaches across Amazon.
2. The tension between "Accessibility" and "Security" is interesting. Most people I've worked with find it easier to be obsessed with the latter than the former
3. Amazon got better at SOA over time

I once joined a big chorus of detractors when SOA was still more in the realm of hyped consultingware. But a careful reading shows not only the practical future that SOA meant at the time but also how an investment in something (I'm thinking HTML5 right now) early in the hype curve makes for big dividends after the fact.