Re: What next? Create their own Binary Flag (0/1) scheme?
You REALLY don't understand just how this all works. When you are a garage company, you rely on other people's work for as much as you possibly can. As you grow, you bring a lot of things in-house, but if you are smart, you differentiate between the expertise that is core to your business from that which is not. This is how the large consulting firms exist. Sure, you could have your own team of accountants or lawyers or programmers, but your business is selling widgets. At least one major automobile manufacturer split off its financial services for this reason.
So back to Amazon. When Amazon started, they were a book seller. Okay, online, but a book seller nonetheless. They needed to focus on getting a web front end up that worked and on delivery of their product. Of course the database was in the middle of all of this, and with their rapid success, they soon hit the point were MySQL (or what ever they were using) was choking. So, do you go out and find a bunch of people that can design a better DB engine, or do you look to buy something? They went with Oracle. (Trading one problem with another.)
But then, a funny thing happened. This online bookseller became a technology company. That change meant that it was now reasonable to talk about building your own database solution. But "reasonable to talk about" verses "have it done" are two very different things. You have to decide that it makes sense to proceed, then you need to hire the talent, then you need to build the thing. Oh, wait. You are almost certainly running one of the top 100 largest datasets in the world. You can't bring in average talent. You can't bring in above average talent. You are going to have to recruit (and/or grow) some of the absolutely best talent in the world to execute this plan, because if it fails, you are d-e-a-d dead.
You yeah. It's obvious that one of the most successful companies in the world doesn't have a clue. Glad that you informed us.