I'd argue it's still quite predatory. Basically, they reel in users with other services/products and then charge extortionate prices for egress specifically with massive margins just because they can.
In certain use cases it becomes all or nothing, either you host everything on the cloud or nothing at all which is certainly abusive and highly anti-competitive.
Sign up now for free (and we will auto charge you next month)...
The nice razor handle is cheap, but the blades are expensive.
No one hid the prices from any one... it was all very up front and out in the open. No more data centers no more systems admins, no more capacity planing just scale on a dime... Here is the price chart....
And everyone didn't want to do that HARD work any more. They could just grow and grow and grow and it would save them money.
You know what happens when your not gonna run out of storage or bandwidth or servers... Everything gets bloated.
SO sure, we can say abusive... Amazon abused all the poor stupid vp's who took the lazy way out and let their systems get so fat and bloated on button mashing "l" shaped engineers. Crying about the lock in, about the pricing after you signed up for the service is your own fault. Take the hit and move on!
I'd argue it's still quite predatory. Basically, they reel in users with other services/products and then charge extortionate prices for egress specifically with massive margins just because they can.
In certain use cases it becomes all or nothing, either you host everything on the cloud or nothing at all which is certainly abusive and highly anti-competitive.