I wasn't comparing 1998 Stanford technology to 2016 AWS as if it was apples to apples. The "AWS" was a modern analogy to give an idea of what they didn't have to spend money on compared to other startups. In 1997, if you didn't have a university to host your (potential business) website, what were the options? You could call up one of the IBM/HP/Origin managed data centers and have them rack some servers. But that costs money, and requires a contract, etc, etc.