Comment by jnwatson
4 years ago
How is it price gouging if the price is on the tin? It isn't like there's a "surprise" as to how much they charge, and it isn't like there aren't a dozen alternatives including DIY.
I'm the first to say that AWS is too expensive, and I vote with my wallet (and the company I work for by proxy). But I'll never claim that there's any gouging involved.
Price gouging is the practice of using outsized leverage in a particular market to charge excessive prices. Like snow shovels doubling in price after a snow storm. Or $10 water bottles after a hurricane.
So for AWS the term is arguably correctly applied.
But I'd be more worried about the market if AWS was artificially undercutting pricing because it would kill the incentive to create competitors or innovation in the space.
> Price gouging is the practice of using outsized leverage in a particular market to charge excessive prices. Like snow shovels doubling in price after a snow storm. Or $10 water bottles after a hurricane. > So for AWS the term is arguably correctly applied
What outsized leverage have AWS had for a decade? There are multiple competitors at different levels, AWS are just better in terms of coverage/redundancy and amount of services.
They are meaningfully better only in one thing: size = PR = network effects.
> So for AWS the term is arguably correctly applied.
Can you elicit the argument by which this is correctly applied?
Point was just that having the "price on the tin" is irrelevant to whether there's price gouging going on.
But, I guess the argument could be similar to the case against Apple for its iOS App Store: there are lots of competitors, but the lock-in arguably creates a market definition of Apple customers. AWS customers are largely locked-in and at the mercy of AWS prices.
That's the argument. I'm not sure I buy it, but it's one perspective.