I wonder if we are far too quick to bestow CEOs with credit for something other people effected. Sure the CEO is the one to sign off on everything, but the question to ask is could any other person in the CEO role at that time, have done any different? I don't know the details in this particular case, but I'll go out on a limb and say the CEO quite likely did not proclaim "make this happen". Business was growing at an unbelievable pace, their systems were probably stressed to the max, their development was likely choked and the technical team comes up and says this is what we need to do otherwise we can't handle more than this much traffic. What choice does the CEO have? He says, send me your proposal and broadcasts it.
As for AWS, as far as I remember, Bezos was initially against the idea. The idea was the brainchild of one Andy Jassy who along with Rick Salzell convinced a reluctant board into trying this out. They realized that they had been unintentionally building this cloud platform for some years now in order to provide sellers with computing resources. Opening up to public users was just a small sales move. Whether they do it or not, they were going to continue to invest in their cloud platform and nothing would change as far as their technical direction was concerned, so the board finally relented.
As for AWS, as far as I remember, Bezos was initially against the idea. The idea was the brainchild of one Andy Jassy who along with Rick Salzell convinced a reluctant board into trying this out. They realized that they had been unintentionally building this cloud platform for some years now in order to provide sellers with computing resources. Opening up to public users was just a small sales move. Whether they do it or not, they were going to continue to invest in their cloud platform and nothing would change as far as their technical direction was concerned, so the board finally relented.