I’m completely not getting why any of this is anticompetitive. They offer a discounted rate to run their own services but their own services lack certain featur

I’m completely not getting why any of this is anticompetitive. They offer a discounted rate to run their own services but their own services lack certain features and flexibility you would get if you run them yourself. That seems the very definition of the traditional IT infrastructure tradeoff - cost vs functionality. Having options in that space is good. TFA basically says it’s anticompetitive because if you don’t use managed services you pay fees for interzone network traffic. Yes, but if you don’t use managed services you don’t pay for them so you save on that cost. Which cost tradeoff is best for you is going to depend on a lot of factors (how much interzone traffic, your use case etc) and you’re going to need to make a sensible decision that works for you. In general I’m not sympathetic with the ethos of complaining about cloud service providers. They are great for many things but not all things and there are many other hosting options you can explore that may be better depending on what you’re trying to do. In many case it’s a cost vs convenience or cost vs functionality type tradeoff.