Vrlo uspješan tradicionalan trgovac u maloprodaji godišnje može obraditi desetke tisuća transakcija: s druge strane, na Amazonovim europskim web-mjestima 2005. je obrađeno približno 71 milijuna različitih narudžbi, a taj se broj 2013. povećao na više od [1 – 1,5] milijardi.
Här ges följande exempel: ”While some functionality, such as, for example, identity, which allows customers to log on the website, or Item Master Service, which maintains a catalogue of all products sold on Amazon, has been provided since the very first days of Amazon's operations, the underlying technology would have been rewritten entirely (and continuously) over the years. […] the identity technology used by Amazon in 2010 had little to do with the identity technology used prior to 2005 – the 2005 service has been disassembled and rewritten as a number of smaller, more manageable services that together provide the identity functionality, to adapt the technology to the evolution of the scope of Amazon's operations.”