1. Offer a great user experience. Many cloud providers are just pumping products out the door with little to no concern for UX.
2. Have great personality. That could be through offering outstanding support, or through being the kind of company that people root for. (Honeycomb.io is a good example of this.)
That is in fact how FUD got into the vernacular. They would make vague promises that you couldn't quite call outright lies about having a product coming in that market, and a year later they'd put out something tepid (thereby proving they were lying about their progress earlier), but with some bulk licensing deal.
By the time the MS product came out the competitor would already be experiencing reduced sales growth because people would play wait-and-see for the MS product.
There is nothing stopping any of these folks from pulling the same trick. Having a better product will not save you. A brilliant product might, but even that's not a given.
True UX—not UI, which often gets confused with UX—could matter only if it affects org-wide adoption or ease of use for non-technical users.
While I think a bunch of nice people work there I have the feeling that the industry sees their opinions as quite controversial.