From an outside view it seems like AWS has definitely arbitraged costs over time to collect a lot of money. Raw capacity that costs them $1 today costs them $0.

From an outside view it seems like AWS has definitely arbitraged costs over time to collect a lot of money. Raw capacity that costs them $1 today costs them $0.80 next year, but they still sell it at the price they chose to cover the $1. Having said that, there will be someone sprinting breathlessly into the thread to tell me that AWS has lowered prices on X a dozen times and on Y fourteen times and so on. But these decisions are made intermittently, by humans with bonus schemes, and AWS is harvesting the surplus in the meantime. It feels from the outside as if retail Amazon pays serious, ongoing attention to selling at the minimum possible price, but AWS just doesn't feel the same pressure to do so.