What’s interesting about these mega contracts is that I’m sure there is consideration of second-order and long term effects, beyond the contract itself. E.g. I

What’s interesting about these mega contracts is that I’m sure there is consideration of second-order and long term effects, beyond the contract itself. E.g. If awarding the JSF contract to Boeing would have caused Lockheed to go out of business, that could be quite bad in the long run, as now you have just a single major aerospace provider. As long as both planes meet the requirements and are competitive, I could certainly imagine that tipping the scales. I think the same argument could easily apply here. AWS is the market leader by far. As long as the price and services are competitive and both meet requirements, giving the boost to #2 keeps the market more competitive for the long-haul. Occam´s razor would suggest that there probably was some influence. But there was also likely influence in the initial creation of the RFP, favoring AMZ. In any case, the FUD in this post about ‘inferior technology’ is pretty effective at wiping away any sympathy for Amazon that I might have had..