Techies be damned,
Amazon has arrived!

To the delight of companies that can't afford their own database, Amazon is launching SimpleDB, an online service that runs database queries.

Amazon said in a statement that the new service will allow companies to store, process, and query data without worrying about "managing schemas, maintaining indexes, tuning performance, or scaling access to their data."

Analyst Brand Shimmin perceives the new service as a sign Amazon is moving into Google territory; in effect, it is becoming a provider of hosted services.

Google has oft expressed its belief that 90 percent of the world's software will be online one day.

Both companies may benefit from such a future, thanks to their enormous infrastructure, which is capable of processing large amounts of data.