I know first hand the kind of discounts some companies much, much smaller than Netflix can get, and they are steep. EC2 is still expensive then too, but if you pay, say, a million a year to Amazon without massive discounts, you've not done your job when negotiating.

But yes, someone with the leverage Netflix has will be paying relatively reasonable rates for EC2 services. But pretty much nobody else has the leverage Netflix has.

> I've heard the non-AWS folks talk of these vendor lock ins or long term costs but aren't those irrelevant in 2016+?

Paying far above market rates is never going to be irrelevant, because if you pay above market and your competitor doesn't, chances are they'll have you for breakfast thanks to better margins.

Why in the world would you agree to pay above market rates to get locked in for 1-3 years when you can pay less on a month-by-month contract?