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Re:How we got our AWS bill to around 2% of revenue by jbverschoor on Sunday June 28, 2020 @04:01AM (#23667370)
AWS initially was never meant for this type of workload.

It started with epiphemeral instances, available for a fixed workload, billed by the hour, such as batch jobs.

It turned out people were willing to pay $100 a month for a box worth $30 a month.

Re:How we got our AWS bill to around 2% of revenue by zxcmx on Sunday June 28, 2020 @04:19AM (#23667429)
Machines provisioned by API were not mainstream in 2006, the "cheap" way to host was shared hosting, and dedicated / cpanel boxes were more common than VMs. Actually, pretty sure "vservers" were a big thing at the time and kind of fit where cheap VMs do now.

AWS was a very different product and not really comparable to other things available at the time.

Re:How we got our AWS bill to around 2% of revenue by murukesh_s on Sunday June 28, 2020 @06:57AM (#23667974)
Also the elasticity and backing by a company that had seen the scale themselves, and can possible deliver for you. I remember being a then startup and boxes costing more than 2x the money we were somehow attracted to it and kept it as the option we would move if we ever had a revenue.. Large companies probably spent more than their AWS bills on software license fees (Oracle/ERP/SAP etc) and employee salaries so they don't care.
Re:How we got our AWS bill to around 2% of revenue by Hello71 on Sunday June 28, 2020 @07:35AM (#23668121)
Linode started in 2003. Just because there was no DigitalOcean shoveling money into the free credits pit of venture capitalism doesn't mean that affordable VPS services didn't exist. According to https://www.programmableweb.com/api/linode, Linode started offering an API before 2008.
Re:How we got our AWS bill to around 2% of revenue by jbverschoor on Sunday June 28, 2020 @12:41PM (#23670013)
DO had one of the best ads, or a least one of the best targeted / positioned ads.

"You've been developing like a beast, and you app is ready to go live"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHZLCahai4Q