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Isn't it what we also do when we negotiate the highest possible salary? What's so terribly and inherently immoral to that? To me this sounds a bit ideological-

Isn't it what we also do when we negotiate the highest possible salary? What's so terribly and inherently immoral to that? To me this sounds a bit ideological-driven decision making. The fact is they never raised their prices. People decided to use knowing the price. They weren't screwed afterwards. If the service is saving precious time and money, buying opportunity for the business, why would I ditch it? Because AWS is extracting as much as they can? Great, I wanna use services from successful people. I just want them to come forward in advance about how much they cost, not later after I decided.

zaptheimpaler 5y ago
Yeah i feel like this point is often conveniently overlooked because it's just uncomfortable.. HN comments often lean towards maximizing comp, thus tacitly endorsing the company to maximize stock price so their RSUs are worth more. But they don't like seeing the other end of where the money comes from..
Kinrany 5y ago
The argument is that this is rent-seeking. A mechanism like this allows the company to capture 99% of the value they add compared to their competitors, which is obviously not fair.
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  Rent-seeking involves manipulating public policy to artificially increase profits. This isn't really the case, is it? The point sometimes people miss is that the value of a service varies to each person, business or team. It might be that, for you, in the contexts you were in, they were capturing too much with their price to the point its not advantageous for you to use the service. That's fine, use something else. But it doesn't mean everyone lives the exact same experience as you.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    Rent seeking doesn't require manipulating public policy, manipulating public policy is an effective method of rent seeking. I think vendor lock-in leading to higher prices is an example of rent seeking. The prices are going up not because that cloud provider is doing more/better things, but because of social things built around it
    - rmbyrro 5y ago
      This isn't rent seeking, it's called sales. You may not like it, but it's how the world works and what puts food on our tables. The problem I see with vendor lock-in is when, after you're locked, the service provider exploit this to change their terms (price and/or else) in a disproportionate and unjustifiable way against your initial interests in the service. This never happened with AWS, to my knowledge (please correct if I'm wrong). Everyone knew the price when they subscribed. Little changed afterwards. AWS was able to meet a demand with quality enough products in an acceptable price to whoever decided to buy. This is a commercial transaction. They're tremendously successful at marketing, sales and delivering, and that's OK. They don't have to be ashamed of that, there's nothing immoral or "rent-seeking" here. They're providing a service and selling it honestly, with transparent and predictable prices. Lock-in exploitation happened with GCP at least once, that I know, with App Engine. And their service was doomed after that, as developers reacted against their practice and they weren't able to grow past a tiny fraction of the market.
      - pritambaral 5y ago
        > The problem I see with vendor lock-in is when, after you're locked, the service provider exploit this to change their terms (price and/or else) in a disproportionate and unjustifiable way against your initial interests in the service. > This never happened with AWS, to my knowledge (please correct if I'm wrong). Everyone knew the price when they subscribed. Little changed afterwards. AWS was able to meet a demand with quality enough products in an acceptable price to whoever decided to buy. Vendor lock-in does not require any changes to terms, price, or any part of the service or product provided. In most classically studied cases of vendor lock-in (e.g., Microsoft Windows and Office binary formats, VHS vs. Beta), everyone knew the lack of interoperability when they bought the service/good, and nothing changed afterwards. That didn't stop those cases from becoming "vendor lock-in".
kortilla 5y ago
Sure, but don’t pretend AWS is purely driven by innovation and delivering value to customers. Just say that AWS is trying to extract as much money as customers are willing to pay regardless of how little something costs them because they have a moat.

zaptheimpaler 5y ago

Yeah i feel like this point is often conveniently overlooked because it's just uncomfortable.. HN comments often lean towards maximizing comp, thus tacitly endorsing the company to maximize stock price so their RSUs are worth more. But they don't like seeing the other end of where the money comes from..

Kinrany 5y ago

The argument is that this is rent-seeking. A mechanism like this allows the company to capture 99% of the value they add compared to their competitors, which is obviously not fair.

rmbyrro 5y ago
Rent-seeking involves manipulating public policy to artificially increase profits. This isn't really the case, is it? The point sometimes people miss is that the value of a service varies to each person, business or team. It might be that, for you, in the contexts you were in, they were capturing too much with their price to the point its not advantageous for you to use the service. That's fine, use something else. But it doesn't mean everyone lives the exact same experience as you.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  Rent seeking doesn't require manipulating public policy, manipulating public policy is an effective method of rent seeking. I think vendor lock-in leading to higher prices is an example of rent seeking. The prices are going up not because that cloud provider is doing more/better things, but because of social things built around it
  - rmbyrro 5y ago
    This isn't rent seeking, it's called sales. You may not like it, but it's how the world works and what puts food on our tables. The problem I see with vendor lock-in is when, after you're locked, the service provider exploit this to change their terms (price and/or else) in a disproportionate and unjustifiable way against your initial interests in the service. This never happened with AWS, to my knowledge (please correct if I'm wrong). Everyone knew the price when they subscribed. Little changed afterwards. AWS was able to meet a demand with quality enough products in an acceptable price to whoever decided to buy. This is a commercial transaction. They're tremendously successful at marketing, sales and delivering, and that's OK. They don't have to be ashamed of that, there's nothing immoral or "rent-seeking" here. They're providing a service and selling it honestly, with transparent and predictable prices. Lock-in exploitation happened with GCP at least once, that I know, with App Engine. And their service was doomed after that, as developers reacted against their practice and they weren't able to grow past a tiny fraction of the market.
    - pritambaral 5y ago
      > The problem I see with vendor lock-in is when, after you're locked, the service provider exploit this to change their terms (price and/or else) in a disproportionate and unjustifiable way against your initial interests in the service. > This never happened with AWS, to my knowledge (please correct if I'm wrong). Everyone knew the price when they subscribed. Little changed afterwards. AWS was able to meet a demand with quality enough products in an acceptable price to whoever decided to buy. Vendor lock-in does not require any changes to terms, price, or any part of the service or product provided. In most classically studied cases of vendor lock-in (e.g., Microsoft Windows and Office binary formats, VHS vs. Beta), everyone knew the lack of interoperability when they bought the service/good, and nothing changed afterwards. That didn't stop those cases from becoming "vendor lock-in".

kortilla 5y ago

Sure, but don’t pretend AWS is purely driven by innovation and delivering value to customers. Just say that AWS is trying to extract as much money as customers are willing to pay regardless of how little something costs them because they have a moat.