以下是上述内容的中文翻译： Acquired 播客的一期节目剖析了亚马逊云服务（AWS）的历史和重要性。主持人 Ben Gilbert 和 David Rosenthal 驳斥了 AWS 仅仅源于 Amazon.com 多余服务器容量的普遍说法。相反，他们提出了四个不同的起源故事。 第一个起源故事强调了 Tim O'Reilly 的 Web 2.0 概念的影响，尤其是 API 和互操作性的重要性。杰夫·贝佐斯（Jeff Bezos）接受了这一愿景，并在亚马逊内部组建了一个团队，构建 API，允许开发者访问 Amazon.com 的产品目录。这导致了 AWS 的最初迭代，重点是服务于亚马逊的联盟营销计划。 第二个故事突出了亚马逊内部在单体软件代码库方面面临的挑战。随着公司的发展，在不破坏现有功能的情况下添加新功能变得越来越困难。在技术助理安迪·贾西（Andy Jassy）的帮助下，杰夫·贝佐斯强制推行向面向服务的架构（SOA）的转变，所有内部团队都通过强化的 API 接口进行通信。这项举措旨在减少团队间的沟通，提高开发速度，并促进分散式创新。 第三个起源故事建立在前一个故事的基础上，解释了 SOA 转型如何从软件扩展到 IT 基础设施。随着分布式团队独立工作，集中式 IT 规划变得不可能。亚马逊意识到需要将 IT 转化为一个可通过 API 访问的计算资源池，从而产生了云 IT 基础设施的概念。这促使安迪·贾西提出了一个愿景，即向第三方提供基于 API 的 IT 基础设施，标志着 AWS 作为云计算供应商的正式诞生。 第四个起源故事提供了一个不同的视角，认为以服务形式销售虚拟计算服务器的想法最初来自网络工程师本杰明·布莱克（Benjamin Black）和他的老板克里斯·平克汉姆（Chris Pinkham），他们独立工作。平克汉姆和他的团队独立开发了弹性计算云（EC2）。这些努力最终被整合到更大的 AWS 计划中，贾西领导 AWS，而平克汉姆则在南非监督 EC2 的开发。 该播客强调了 AWS 在商业和市场方面的根本性创新。AWS 使开发人员能够使用信用卡即时配置存储和计算资源，无需冗长的提案、谈判和数据中心空间。这开启了一个快速创新的新时代，使初创公司能够快速且经济地构建和部署应用程序。 主持人还讨论了各种公司是如何错失创建 AWS 的机会的。IBM 和 Oracle 不愿蚕食其利润丰厚的高利润硬件和软件许可业务。微软最初专注于一种平台即服务的方法，即 Azure Cloud Services，忽略了基础设施即服务原语的需求，未能吸引初创企业和企业客户。谷歌虽然拥有先进的数据中心技术，但缺乏企业销售专业知识和运营毅力来有效地竞争。 最终，该播客将亚马逊的成功归功于其早期对初创企业的关注、其提供非干涉性原语的承诺以及其拥抱颠覆性定价模式的意愿。他们还讨论了竞争格局如何演变，微软已成为一个强大的竞争者，而云的定义也从物理硬件的位置转变为通过 API 提供的一组新的专有服务。

The Acquired podcast episode dissects the history and significance of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal debunk the common myth of AWS arising solely from Amazon.com's excess server capacity. Instead, they present four distinct origin stories. The first origin story emphasizes the influence of Tim O'Reilly's Web 2.0 concepts, particularly the importance of APIs and interoperability. Jeff Bezos embraced this vision, creating a team within Amazon to build APIs that allowed developers to access Amazon.com's product catalog. This led to the initial iteration of AWS, focused on serving Amazon's affiliate program. The second story highlights Amazon's internal challenges with its monolithic software code base. As the company grew, it became increasingly difficult to add new features without breaking existing functionality. Jeff Bezos, with the help of his technical assistant Andy Jassy, mandated a shift to a service-oriented architecture (SOA), where all internal teams communicated via hardened API interfaces. This initiative aimed to reduce inter-team communication, improve development speed, and foster decentralized innovation. The third origin story builds upon the previous one, explaining how the SOA transformation extended beyond software to IT infrastructure. As distributed teams worked independently, central IT planning became impossible. Amazon realized the need to transform IT into an API-accessible pool of computing resources, leading to the concept of cloud IT infrastructure. This resulted in Andy Jassy proposing a vision to offer API-based IT infrastructure to third parties, marking the official birth of AWS as a cloud computing provider. The fourth origin story offers a dissenting perspective, suggesting that the idea for selling virtual compute servers as a service originated with network engineer Benjamin Black and his boss Chris Pinkham, working separately. Pinkham and his team developed Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) independently. These efforts were eventually integrated into the larger AWS initiative, with Jassy leading AWS and Pinkham overseeing EC2's development in South Africa. The podcast emphasizes the radical innovation of AWS on the business and market side. AWS enabled developers to provision storage and compute resources instantly with a credit card, eliminating the need for lengthy proposals, negotiations, and data center space. This fostered a new era of rapid innovation, allowing startups to build and deploy applications quickly and affordably. The hosts also discuss how various companies missed the opportunity to create AWS. IBM and Oracle were unwilling to cannibalize their lucrative high-margin hardware and software licensing businesses. Microsoft initially focused on a platform-as-a-service approach with Azure Cloud Services, neglecting the need for infrastructure-as-a-service primitives and failing to attract both startups and enterprise customers. Google, despite possessing advanced data center technology, lacked the enterprise sales expertise and operational grit to compete effectively. Ultimately, the podcast credits Amazon's success to its early focus on startups, its commitment to providing unopinionated primitives, and its willingness to embrace a disruptive pricing model. They also discuss how the competitive landscape has evolved, with Microsoft emerging as a strong contender and cloud's definition shifting from location of physical hardware to a new set of propriatary services offered through APIs.