One thing all the posts like this miss is you don't pay sticker price at modest scale. And if you're a whale who can move your workload around to generate competitive bids, you can negotiate prices down to cost + some fixed margin.
The big guys also forecast their usage and make long-term commitments, which will yield savings beyond the advertised (e.g.) 3 year reserved instance pricing. Forecasting demand is a foreign concept for most cloud users, and elasticity has real cost in the form of reduced utilization.
That said, as a small fish, I find the egress costs obscene.
What is "at cost?" The cost to AWS is $/gbps (size of pipe), but they charge customers $/gb (stuff through the pipe). So if they're still charging you on the dimension of $/gb, you're probably getting ripped off no matter what they say about their "cost."
The big guys also forecast their usage and make long-term commitments, which will yield savings beyond the advertised (e.g.) 3 year reserved instance pricing. Forecasting demand is a foreign concept for most cloud users, and elasticity has real cost in the form of reduced utilization.
That said, as a small fish, I find the egress costs obscene.
Source: I used to work on AWS