Amazon Cancels Fees for Customers Moving to Rival Cloud Services

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-05/amazon-cancels-fees-for-customers-moving-to-rival-cloud-services

by helsinkiandrew • 2 years ago

60 41 2 years ago

bloomberg.com

helsinkiandrew• 2 years ago

https://archive.ph/ILsrX

Daviey3• 2 years ago

dupe,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39612607

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39609254

Worth noting that they didn't choose to do this, they were required to by the EU.

graemep2• 2 years ago

They were also facing investigation elsewhere, so it was not just the EU. In the UK Ofcom (the telecoms regulator) has just finished an investigation into the cloud services market and referred AWS and Microsoft to the CMA (the competition regulator), over the issues of egress fees and licensing: https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/The-CMA-anti-trust-in...

Daviey3• 2 years ago

Whilst I agree others were pursuing the matter, the action that /required/ them to do so was solely on the EU. Yes, they may have been facing pressure from others, which may have contributed to it, but the EU rightly deserves the sole praise for this for actually acting on it, and promptly.

RantyDave• 2 years ago

Ahhhhh. I was wondering how Amazon (of all people) would decide to do this.

jonplackett• 2 years ago

It’s kind of ironic that the removal of these anti-competitive things actually make the product itself more competitive.

It’s the same with Apple and the AppStore (if they ever actually do this properly). The main complaint about iOS is it’s too restrictive. If you can have an alt AppStore then that makes iOS _better_ not worse.

FridgeSeal• 2 years ago

I do not follow the logic?

I think cloud providers having egress fees is flat out just revenue raising. I don’t follow the connection to the App Store, which is a matter of restrictive for whom and is not an analogous situation.

danpalmer• 2 years ago

Egress fees in general, or the current trend in egress pricing?

Bandwidth isn't free, so cloud providers would need to charge for it somewhere, and the strategy of all the major providers is to charge in line with actual usage, so charging for actual bandwidth usage makes sense.

Now one could argue that not charging ingress fees is "flat out just lock-in", and that perhaps they should be splitting the ingress/egress fees appropriately.

bayindirh• 2 years ago

If an application/service allows me to pack me an go without any friction and fees, I tend to trust that tool more and resist leaving until it starts to sink.

It signals "We believe that we can support and serve you the way you want and we trust ourselves to do it, so no fences and barriers".

As a result, instead of being on the toes for going all in, you can confidently scale in that tool/service.

IOW, it's the difference between a trusting and abusive relationship.

inopinatus5• 2 years ago

How would you like to pay for the outbound bandwidth you’re using? Choose:

1. metered gigabytes

2. bundled in with some other resource you’re paying for (which one?)

3. fixed allowance then it stops working altogether

4. monthly charge per 95%ile of contractually provisioned mbps (i.e. old school ISP billing)

5. I just want something for nothing

o_m• 2 years ago

Better products doesn't always equal more profit, which is all a company cares about

suddenclarity2• 2 years ago

Companies consist of people and people care about far more things than profit for a random company. It should be obvious to anyone considering how much people hate on companies and their bosses online. It's close to 60 years ago we got the expression "the long march through the institutions".

suddenclarity2• 2 years ago

The main complaint about iOS is it’s too restrictive.

For a small subset of users. For most others, it just works.

The benefits of being a hassle to move away from and being locked out of family/friend discussions because your Android breaks the group discussion far outweigh the benefits of opening up the platform.

malfist• 2 years ago

That's true in general. Taking an anticompetitive advantage away from a company almost always results in a better product because it forces competition.

Competition is good for both companies and consumers.

catlifeonmars3• 2 years ago

How is it good for companies that already hold a majority market share?

amelius• 2 years ago

This only happens because we're in a near-monopoly situation. Where all the happy laws of the free market start failing miserably and in paradoxical ways.

With sufficient competition, Amazon would be forced to keep egress fees zero.

renegade-otter• 2 years ago

There are two major other Cloud providers and then smaller ones - Linode, DigitalOcean, etc.

AWS is not really a monopoly but people just refuse to think out of the box when building out new infrastructures. I moved all my stuff to DigitalOcean - it's what a cloud should be like.

Not only is AWS a racket, but the constant pile-on of toys has turned it into a complete management nightmare that sucks your time in like a black hole.

MattGaiser• 2 years ago

There is tons of cloud competition. Amazon is nowhere near a monopoly.

catlifeonmars3• 2 years ago

Problem is, free markets beget oligopolies. They’re a natural consequence of being able to accumulate and concentrate capital.

blibble• 2 years ago

how is it ironic? that's the exact goal

companies would rather not compete at all

milesvp• 2 years ago

I think ot was Joel Spolsky who wrote about this with regards to working on MS excel. The ability to convert to the competitor’s format was the final nail in the coffin for them. Once they implemented that feature, there was almost no reason to go with the other spreadsheet. I would expect anything that reduces friction for switching to a competitor is going to be a competitive advantage since it removes risk from the decision.

redwood• 2 years ago

Via support request eg one time during migration. Smart optics. Minimal real impact

taspeotis• 2 years ago

Did they cancel the fee again?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39612607

alephnerd• 2 years ago

This is SOP for retaining and enticing strategic customers.

PANW was notorious for giving customers 2 years free on 5 year length 7 figure contracts of Prisma Cloud a couple years ago.

Because margins are nearly nonexistent in the space, 80%+ discounts are doable to retain or attract strategic accounts either for brand awareness or for stronger product alignment

Amazon Cancels Fees for Customers Moving to Rival Cloud Services

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