4 ms·

Actually, I do genuinely wonder if some day this will be seen as anticompetitive behavior (a form of lock-in via higher than reasonable egress fees).

scarface74 6y ago
Anticompetitive behavior when they clearly state the price? Of all the things that lock you in to any provider once you are at any scale, data isn’t the biggest one. If you have a massive amount of data, you can always get AWS to transfer it to you via a Snowball for $30/TB + a $300 fee.
- sixdimensional 6y ago
  IANAL, but I don't believe stating a price has any impact on whether it is anticompetitive or not. If the behavior is anticompetitive, it doesn't matter if other people do it too and state their price as well. Giving you an option to only bulk egress is not the same either, since the most common scenario for egress would be operational day-to-day inter-network scenarios. If there is an unreasonably high fee for exiting a provider's cloud, to any other network location, on an operational basis, it is actively discouraging exiting the provider's services creating a kind of price barrier that could be cost prohibitive for operational inter-networking. Operational inter-networking, to me, encourages competition not discourages it. For example, perhaps I want to use Microsoft Azure's Data Factory to move data from AWS S3 to Redshift. It is not possible as far as I know without egress from AWS to Microsoft's network, and then back again. But surely these clouds are connected with peering relationships making the cost of ingress/egress negligible, so why is this not allowed? That would allow users of the cloud to freely mix and match services from among many clouds. The world I see today does not seem to encourage such competition.
  - sdfdsfsdf222 6y ago
    The Bandwidth Alliance was meant to solve this problem. Azure and GCP have joined, AWS has not. https://www.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-alliance/ https://www.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-alliance/
    - sixdimensional 6y ago
      Wow, I hadn't seen this. This is quite cool. So clearly somebody else at Cloudflare saw the same concern I do and came up with a creative solution. Interesting that AWS isn't playing though.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      That’s a classic move for second tier players to come up with a standard to take on the incumbent. Apple did the same thing with Webkit. Google came onboard and for awhile, everyone was releasing Webkit compatible browsers.
  - pests 6y ago
    One factor could be while of course they are peered it might be paid peering or if they allowed the traffic unmetered it would upset other free peering arrangements due to subsequent asymmetrical transfer rates.
- oefrha 6y ago
  > you can always get AWS to transfer it to you via a Snowball for $30/TB + a $300 fee. 1. That fee is in addition to S3 retrieval costs. > Q: What does it cost to export my data? > In addition to the Export job fees detailed on our pricing page, you will also be charged all fees incurred to retrieve your data from Amazon S3. https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/faqs/ https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/faqs/ 2. $30/TB isn’t even cheap by itself.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    If you’re any kind of business ,$30 a TB is cheap. S3 request fees are $.0004 per 1000 GET requests. If you had 100000 objects (files) you would pay $40
gz5 6y ago
the best form of competition will be simpler distributed compute, with the ability to more seamlessly process workloads across end user device, edge compute and cloud. of course, AWS will play there too, but doesn't mean the overall ratios won't tilt towards the edge (although plenty of data "left" for the clouds since overall data will continue to grow).
- sixdimensional 6y ago
  I suppose, like what is happening with Kubernetes.
User23 6y ago
I thought anticompetitive behavior was the exact opposite of price gouging. You sell below cost to put your competitors out of business. Evidently AWS isn't doing that with bandwidth.
- nickff 6y ago
  If you price lower than your competitors it is anti-competitive dumping. If you price higher than your competitors, it is monopolistic gouging. If you price the same as your competitors, it is price-fixing. No matter what price someone selects, they are guilty of something.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Well no, it's only gouging if you're running at a loss. If you're not running a loss and pricing lower than your competitors that's just fine.
- neurostimulant 6y ago
  Egress is expensive, therefore you're less likely to use other cheaper cloud vendors to host some part of your infra and keep everything inside aws network (as internal aws bandwidth is free even halfway across the world). Also if you have huge amount of data, moving them out of aws into another cloud would net you a hefty bandwidth bills so you're less likely to consider moving.
  - gazoakley 6y ago
    Not true (unfortunately). Transfer within an AZ is free, but go outside that and the pricing is a minefield: https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1172239124251709449?s=19 https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1172239124251709449?s=1...
    - neurostimulant 6y ago
      Ah you're right, I somehow remember it as free.

scarface74 6y ago

Anticompetitive behavior when they clearly state the price? Of all the things that lock you in to any provider once you are at any scale, data isn’t the biggest one. If you have a massive amount of data, you can always get AWS to transfer it to you via a Snowball for $30/TB + a $300 fee.

sixdimensional 6y ago
IANAL, but I don't believe stating a price has any impact on whether it is anticompetitive or not. If the behavior is anticompetitive, it doesn't matter if other people do it too and state their price as well. Giving you an option to only bulk egress is not the same either, since the most common scenario for egress would be operational day-to-day inter-network scenarios. If there is an unreasonably high fee for exiting a provider's cloud, to any other network location, on an operational basis, it is actively discouraging exiting the provider's services creating a kind of price barrier that could be cost prohibitive for operational inter-networking. Operational inter-networking, to me, encourages competition not discourages it. For example, perhaps I want to use Microsoft Azure's Data Factory to move data from AWS S3 to Redshift. It is not possible as far as I know without egress from AWS to Microsoft's network, and then back again. But surely these clouds are connected with peering relationships making the cost of ingress/egress negligible, so why is this not allowed? That would allow users of the cloud to freely mix and match services from among many clouds. The world I see today does not seem to encourage such competition.
- sdfdsfsdf222 6y ago
  The Bandwidth Alliance was meant to solve this problem. Azure and GCP have joined, AWS has not. https://www.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-alliance/ https://www.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-alliance/
  - sixdimensional 6y ago
    Wow, I hadn't seen this. This is quite cool. So clearly somebody else at Cloudflare saw the same concern I do and came up with a creative solution. Interesting that AWS isn't playing though.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    That’s a classic move for second tier players to come up with a standard to take on the incumbent. Apple did the same thing with Webkit. Google came onboard and for awhile, everyone was releasing Webkit compatible browsers.
- pests 6y ago
  One factor could be while of course they are peered it might be paid peering or if they allowed the traffic unmetered it would upset other free peering arrangements due to subsequent asymmetrical transfer rates.
oefrha 6y ago
> you can always get AWS to transfer it to you via a Snowball for $30/TB + a $300 fee. 1. That fee is in addition to S3 retrieval costs. > Q: What does it cost to export my data? > In addition to the Export job fees detailed on our pricing page, you will also be charged all fees incurred to retrieve your data from Amazon S3. https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/faqs/ https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/faqs/ 2. $30/TB isn’t even cheap by itself.
- scarface74 6y ago
  If you’re any kind of business ,$30 a TB is cheap. S3 request fees are $.0004 per 1000 GET requests. If you had 100000 objects (files) you would pay $40

gz5 6y ago

the best form of competition will be simpler distributed compute, with the ability to more seamlessly process workloads across end user device, edge compute and cloud. of course, AWS will play there too, but doesn't mean the overall ratios won't tilt towards the edge (although plenty of data "left" for the clouds since overall data will continue to grow).

sixdimensional 6y ago
I suppose, like what is happening with Kubernetes.

User23 6y ago

I thought anticompetitive behavior was the exact opposite of price gouging. You sell below cost to put your competitors out of business. Evidently AWS isn't doing that with bandwidth.

nickff 6y ago
If you price lower than your competitors it is anti-competitive dumping. If you price higher than your competitors, it is monopolistic gouging. If you price the same as your competitors, it is price-fixing. No matter what price someone selects, they are guilty of something.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Well no, it's only gouging if you're running at a loss. If you're not running a loss and pricing lower than your competitors that's just fine.
neurostimulant 6y ago
Egress is expensive, therefore you're less likely to use other cheaper cloud vendors to host some part of your infra and keep everything inside aws network (as internal aws bandwidth is free even halfway across the world). Also if you have huge amount of data, moving them out of aws into another cloud would net you a hefty bandwidth bills so you're less likely to consider moving.
- gazoakley 6y ago
  Not true (unfortunately). Transfer within an AZ is free, but go outside that and the pricing is a minefield: https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1172239124251709449?s=19 https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1172239124251709449?s=1...
  - neurostimulant 6y ago
    Ah you're right, I somehow remember it as free.