• The Washington Post, Thursday, November 9, 2006 12:30 PM

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos yesterday laid out his ambitious new strategy for selling online storage and computing power at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Bezos' big idea is to allow other companies to use Amazon's pre-built infrastructure without any of the headaches of maintaining and upgrading their business network.

What does this have to do with its online retail store? Absolutely nothing. If you need a real-world equivalent, think of Wal-Mart opening its storage warehouses to retailing competitors across the country. As Bezos said: "We make muck so you don't have to." This means Amazon is moving more into the turf of Web services giants like Google and Microsoft. Indeed, Google is preparing a vast data center of its own near a hydroelectric plant in Oregon.

Users are billed only for what they use. The service got a very enthusiastic reception from the Web 2.0 audience.

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