AWS didn&#x27;t come out until 2006, and it was considered pretty revolutionary at the time.<p>The way you hosted a website in 2004 was that you signed up with a web hosting provider and either rented a shared webhost for $10&#x2F;month or paid for a dedicated server for about $60&#x2F;month.  There were little or no provisions for being able to grow your hosting needs at the click of a button.  When you read stories of how eg. HotOrNot scaled, it involved a lot of panicked calls to investors, and on-the-phone negotiations with hosting providers where they were like &quot;We need more servers <i>now</i>, we&#x27;ll make sure we can get you the money within 30 days&quot;, often followed by a tech going down to the datacenter and physically installing a new server in the colo cage.<p>The other revolutionary part of his prediction is &quot;Someone will make a lot of money&quot;.  ISPs &amp; hosting in 2004 were a very competitive commodity business, filled with overcapacity from the dot-com boom.