They're not as secretive as Apple. We use AWS and I'm often talking to our account manager or support, and they're always talking about upcoming products and features in the pipeline. They just don't give ETAs, which is sensible, to ensure customers aren't banking on feature X being available on date Y.

They also advertise some of their working practices when it benefits them (eg datacentre physical staff don't have logical access), but to be honest, there aren't a lot of big companies out there that openly advertise their internal processes. They're also being extremely open about wanting to be The Middle Man when it comes to cloud, nothing stealthy about it at all. I just went to a free AWS summit, where the VP giving the keynote said as much - how is it possible to accuse them of secrecy when they paid for a big venue for me to visit, just in order to tell me exactly that factoid?

They are worth watching due to monopolistic concerns, sure, but there's so much FUD out there about them.