He is comparing big tech cloud to smaller hosting companies, like DigitalOcean and OVH, not to "run your own machines in your own data centers."
He is talking about virtual machines.
?? All he's saying is that the cloud market leaders are able to charge more. That is, despite Amazon & Microsoft's & Google's economies of scale, there are much lower cost offerings for ordinary virtual machines and storage, all else being equal.
It has nothing to do with on-prem.
You didn't read the article at all, did you?
Read it enough to consider his primise was flawed and to judge the article as such. Running other "cloud" providers on-prem is not a recommended unless you're in Gov or Financial. [EDIT] Comparing the other cloud providers is totally a valid exercise. Just disagree with the wording of his/her approach
He's not suggesting doing anything on-prem.
I stand corrected.
If you've never done Datacenter operations, then you're missing a giant point that eliminating an entire department of expensive technical people is a huge gain long term.