There's also the fact that their Windows infrastructure is probably costlier to maintain. Windows wasn't built for this use-case, and they're desperately trying to catch up. In the meantime, they have this convenient project called Linux on hand.
There seems to be three types of Windows Server licenses you can purchase [1]. Assuming a price differential $50 per month between Linux/Windows as GP states.
I don't know exactly what would be the server license you would purchase if you got the actual license. But after month 20, even after the 41% discount - lets round it out to 50%, you have paid more than a one-time payment for the Essentials server. After month 36, you have paid more than a one-time payment for Standard server. It takes a while to get to the DataCenter server (~20 years), and I honestly don't know enough to figure out which use case matches which license type, but if someone can manage with the Essentials server (touted as being useful for small businesses up to 25 employees), then you are now paying, just based on difference between Linux and Windows, a perpetual excess fee over getting a Windows server after about 1.5 years for Essentials and 3 years for Standard.
Obviously, on the cloud you get a lot of extra features, including not having to pay the cost of server maintenance. But for the traditional customers GP is referring to, that might well be a sunk cost. (E.g. you need your sysadmin anyway because of other internal stuff)
However, this statement from GP might actually make a lot of sense:
> The only explanation I can think of for this is that they probably want to compete on price with AWS, while keeping profits from their traditional customers high.
If, like is usually mentioned here on HN, you probably wouldn't go with Windows for server related stuff anyway if you just started out, this does seem like an excellent golden goose for MS - keep your traditional customers within the Windows ecosystem without really doing a whole lot for them in terms of competitive pricing, and in addition turn your one time revenue generating software (Windows server license) into a recurring revenue generating software.
Having said that, I suppose this also means it is generally easier for AWS and Google to compete on price, because MS cannot allow this pegging (Linux vs Windows comparison) to get too wide because you would get comments like GP's.
Is that a reasonable analysis?
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/windows-serve... DataCenter: $6150 Standard: $882 Essentials: $500