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It’s kind of ironic that the removal of these anti-competitive things actually make the product itself more competitive. It’s the same with Apple and the AppSt

It’s kind of ironic that the removal of these anti-competitive things actually make the product itself more competitive. It’s the same with Apple and the AppStore (if they ever actually do this properly). The main complaint about iOS is it’s too restrictive. If you can have an alt AppStore then that makes iOS _better_ not worse.

FridgeSeal 3y ago
I do not follow the logic? I think cloud providers having egress fees is flat out just revenue raising. I don’t follow the connection to the App Store, which is a matter of restrictive for whom and is not an analogous situation.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  Egress fees in general, or the current trend in egress pricing? Bandwidth isn't free, so cloud providers would need to charge for it somewhere, and the strategy of all the major providers is to charge in line with actual usage, so charging for actual bandwidth usage makes sense. Now one could argue that not charging ingress fees is "flat out just lock-in", and that perhaps they should be splitting the ingress/egress fees appropriately.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  If an application/service allows me to pack me an go without any friction and fees, I tend to trust that tool more and resist leaving until it starts to sink. It signals "We believe that we can support and serve you the way you want and we trust ourselves to do it, so no fences and barriers". As a result, instead of being on the toes for going all in, you can confidently scale in that tool/service. IOW, it's the difference between a trusting and abusive relationship.
- inopinatus 3y ago
  How would you like to pay for the outbound bandwidth you’re using? Choose: 1. metered gigabytes 2. bundled in with some other resource you’re paying for (which one?) 3. fixed allowance then it stops working altogether 4. monthly charge per 95%ile of contractually provisioned mbps (i.e. old school ISP billing) 5. I just want something for nothing
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    Whichever one doesn’t make it challenging for customers to switch to another provider. That may raise prices elsewhere (such as ingress fees), and the tradeoff is still likely to be net positive for the customer due to the increased competition.
    - inopinatus 3y ago
      That was option (2). The reductio ad absurdem hits like a train with that option. It’s a trap for new players. In that particular variant, the following year the same people will be complaining about how much ingress costs these days, and the same hapless regulators will feel the urge to be Seen To Do Something. Wash, rinse, repeat. Still, thanks for playing
      - matthewdgreen 3y ago
        The pro-competition regulators aren’t here to make your service cheap. They’re just trying to make sure that customers can exit and switch providers without artificial barriers. If you want to soak people for ingress fees, snd it’s easy for customers to switch, go ahead.
        inopinatus 3y ago
        Bandwidth is not an artificial barrier. It’s real infrastructure, with a real cost. I should know, I once dropped a LINX core switch on my foot. Amazon is doing the right thing by maintaining egress fees but waiving them on departure. Not because it’s free for them, but because there’s zero chance that this precipitates a mass exodus, because moving is still hard even if it’s slightly cheaper. They’ll likely even gain some customers. That is, they’ll absorb the cost with growth. Which is Amazon’s business strategy in a nutshell.
        matthewdgreen 3y ago
        Bandwidth is not artificial, but Amazon’s pricing structure for it absolutely is artificial. As you point out, bandwidth is not free but Amazon didn’t charge for ingress. Now they’re taking that artificial pricing structure and making it equally artificial in a way that (somewhat) promotes competition.
o_m 3y ago
Better products doesn't always equal more profit, which is all a company cares about
- suddenclarity 3y ago
  Companies consist of people and people care about far more things than profit for a random company. It should be obvious to anyone considering how much people hate on companies and their bosses online. It's close to 60 years ago we got the expression "the long march through the institutions".
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    > people care about far more things than profit The "clueless" of The Gervais Principle. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
  - namaria 3y ago
    Management of publicly traded companies in the US is required by law to put profits first.
    - rented_mule 3y ago
      According to a 2014 US Supreme Court decision... "While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so."[1] Public or not, people involved in a business do have fiduciary duties to their investors. But those duties are not specifically about profits. They are about "obedience, information, loyalty, and care"[2]. ---- [1] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/13-354.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/13-354.ht... [2] https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/fiduciary-duty-to-investors https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/fiduciary-duty-to-investors
      - 3y ago
suddenclarity 3y ago
> The main complaint about iOS is it’s too restrictive. For a small subset of users. For most others, it just works. The benefits of being a hassle to move away from and being locked out of family/friend discussions because your Android breaks the group discussion far outweigh the benefits of opening up the platform.
malfist 3y ago
That's true in general. Taking an anticompetitive advantage away from a company almost always results in a better product because it forces competition. Competition is good for both companies and consumers.
- catlifeonmars 3y ago
  How is it good for companies that already hold a majority market share?
amelius 3y ago
This only happens because we're in a near-monopoly situation. Where all the happy laws of the free market start failing miserably and in paradoxical ways. With sufficient competition, Amazon would be forced to keep egress fees zero.
- renegade-otter 3y ago
  There are two major other Cloud providers and then smaller ones - Linode, DigitalOcean, etc. AWS is not really a monopoly but people just refuse to think out of the box when building out new infrastructures. I moved all my stuff to DigitalOcean - it's what a cloud should be like. Not only is AWS a racket, but the constant pile-on of toys has turned it into a complete management nightmare that sucks your time in like a black hole.
- MattGaiser 3y ago
  There is tons of cloud competition. Amazon is nowhere near a monopoly.
  - catlifeonmars 3y ago
    > The Big Three cloud providers accounted for 66% of worldwide cloud revenue. Seems like there is a huge concentration of market share in the big 3. How is this “nowhere near” a monopoly? Source: https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/06/even-as-cloud-infrastructure-market-growth-slows-microsoft-continues-to-gain-on-amazon/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/06/even-as-cloud-infrastructu...
- catlifeonmars 3y ago
  Problem is, free markets beget oligopolies. They’re a natural consequence of being able to accumulate and concentrate capital.
blibble 3y ago
how is it ironic? that's the exact goal companies would rather not compete at all
milesvp 3y ago
I think ot was Joel Spolsky who wrote about this with regards to working on MS excel. The ability to convert to the competitor’s format was the final nail in the coffin for them. Once they implemented that feature, there was almost no reason to go with the other spreadsheet. I would expect anything that reduces friction for switching to a competitor is going to be a competitive advantage since it removes risk from the decision.

FridgeSeal 3y ago

I do not follow the logic? I think cloud providers having egress fees is flat out just revenue raising. I don’t follow the connection to the App Store, which is a matter of restrictive for whom and is not an analogous situation.

danpalmer 3y ago
Egress fees in general, or the current trend in egress pricing? Bandwidth isn't free, so cloud providers would need to charge for it somewhere, and the strategy of all the major providers is to charge in line with actual usage, so charging for actual bandwidth usage makes sense. Now one could argue that not charging ingress fees is "flat out just lock-in", and that perhaps they should be splitting the ingress/egress fees appropriately.
bayindirh 3y ago
If an application/service allows me to pack me an go without any friction and fees, I tend to trust that tool more and resist leaving until it starts to sink. It signals "We believe that we can support and serve you the way you want and we trust ourselves to do it, so no fences and barriers". As a result, instead of being on the toes for going all in, you can confidently scale in that tool/service. IOW, it's the difference between a trusting and abusive relationship.
inopinatus 3y ago
How would you like to pay for the outbound bandwidth you’re using? Choose: 1. metered gigabytes 2. bundled in with some other resource you’re paying for (which one?) 3. fixed allowance then it stops working altogether 4. monthly charge per 95%ile of contractually provisioned mbps (i.e. old school ISP billing) 5. I just want something for nothing
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  Whichever one doesn’t make it challenging for customers to switch to another provider. That may raise prices elsewhere (such as ingress fees), and the tradeoff is still likely to be net positive for the customer due to the increased competition.
  - inopinatus 3y ago
    That was option (2). The reductio ad absurdem hits like a train with that option. It’s a trap for new players. In that particular variant, the following year the same people will be complaining about how much ingress costs these days, and the same hapless regulators will feel the urge to be Seen To Do Something. Wash, rinse, repeat. Still, thanks for playing
    - matthewdgreen 3y ago
      The pro-competition regulators aren’t here to make your service cheap. They’re just trying to make sure that customers can exit and switch providers without artificial barriers. If you want to soak people for ingress fees, snd it’s easy for customers to switch, go ahead.
      - inopinatus 3y ago
        Bandwidth is not an artificial barrier. It’s real infrastructure, with a real cost. I should know, I once dropped a LINX core switch on my foot. Amazon is doing the right thing by maintaining egress fees but waiving them on departure. Not because it’s free for them, but because there’s zero chance that this precipitates a mass exodus, because moving is still hard even if it’s slightly cheaper. They’ll likely even gain some customers. That is, they’ll absorb the cost with growth. Which is Amazon’s business strategy in a nutshell.
        matthewdgreen 3y ago
        Bandwidth is not artificial, but Amazon’s pricing structure for it absolutely is artificial. As you point out, bandwidth is not free but Amazon didn’t charge for ingress. Now they’re taking that artificial pricing structure and making it equally artificial in a way that (somewhat) promotes competition.

o_m 3y ago

Better products doesn't always equal more profit, which is all a company cares about

suddenclarity 3y ago
Companies consist of people and people care about far more things than profit for a random company. It should be obvious to anyone considering how much people hate on companies and their bosses online. It's close to 60 years ago we got the expression "the long march through the institutions".
- willcipriano 3y ago
  > people care about far more things than profit The "clueless" of The Gervais Principle. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
- namaria 3y ago
  Management of publicly traded companies in the US is required by law to put profits first.
  - rented_mule 3y ago
    According to a 2014 US Supreme Court decision... "While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so."[1] Public or not, people involved in a business do have fiduciary duties to their investors. But those duties are not specifically about profits. They are about "obedience, information, loyalty, and care"[2]. ---- [1] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/13-354.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/13-354.ht... [2] https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/fiduciary-duty-to-investors https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/fiduciary-duty-to-investors
    - 3y ago

suddenclarity 3y ago

> The main complaint about iOS is it’s too restrictive. For a small subset of users. For most others, it just works. The benefits of being a hassle to move away from and being locked out of family/friend discussions because your Android breaks the group discussion far outweigh the benefits of opening up the platform.

malfist 3y ago

That's true in general. Taking an anticompetitive advantage away from a company almost always results in a better product because it forces competition. Competition is good for both companies and consumers.

catlifeonmars 3y ago
How is it good for companies that already hold a majority market share?

amelius 3y ago

This only happens because we're in a near-monopoly situation. Where all the happy laws of the free market start failing miserably and in paradoxical ways. With sufficient competition, Amazon would be forced to keep egress fees zero.

renegade-otter 3y ago
There are two major other Cloud providers and then smaller ones - Linode, DigitalOcean, etc. AWS is not really a monopoly but people just refuse to think out of the box when building out new infrastructures. I moved all my stuff to DigitalOcean - it's what a cloud should be like. Not only is AWS a racket, but the constant pile-on of toys has turned it into a complete management nightmare that sucks your time in like a black hole.
MattGaiser 3y ago
There is tons of cloud competition. Amazon is nowhere near a monopoly.
- catlifeonmars 3y ago
  > The Big Three cloud providers accounted for 66% of worldwide cloud revenue. Seems like there is a huge concentration of market share in the big 3. How is this “nowhere near” a monopoly? Source: https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/06/even-as-cloud-infrastructure-market-growth-slows-microsoft-continues-to-gain-on-amazon/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/06/even-as-cloud-infrastructu...
catlifeonmars 3y ago
Problem is, free markets beget oligopolies. They’re a natural consequence of being able to accumulate and concentrate capital.

blibble 3y ago

how is it ironic? that's the exact goal companies would rather not compete at all

milesvp 3y ago

I think ot was Joel Spolsky who wrote about this with regards to working on MS excel. The ability to convert to the competitor’s format was the final nail in the coffin for them. Once they implemented that feature, there was almost no reason to go with the other spreadsheet. I would expect anything that reduces friction for switching to a competitor is going to be a competitive advantage since it removes risk from the decision.