> They aren't crazy or stupid, and as AWS is the world's leading cloud provider then it's highly doubtful that the decision is irrational and motivated by ignorance.
Part of the problem is that a huge proportion of the people I come across who chose AWS used this exact argument. Part of the problem with that argument is that none of the big guys are paying the list prices (unless they're not doing their jobs; I've seen the kind of discounts available once you get into even the few hundred k/month range and tell your account manager you're considering moving), and a lot of them also used the same line of thinking.
It pulls in a lot of people who pick AWS for all the wrong reasons.
> AWS might overcharge a lot, but truth of the matter is that for any sizeable corporation it's irrelevant if they spend 200€ or 400€ on their cloud infrastructure.
The ones I used to deal with used to be more like a 3x-10x cost difference on bills in the 10k-100k/month range. I agree with you that if the difference is ~200/month, then who cares. But a lot of much bigger companies burn money this way. Often because they started off with a 200/month difference, and then never made it a point to re-evaluate as their costs grew.
The difference isn't always that bad, but especially bandwidth hungry services are ridiculously expensive on AWS (to the point where if people really badly want to stay on AWS and spend a lot on bandwidth, a quick and dirty fix is to rent servers to use as caches in front of their AWS setup)
I'm not saying people shouldn't use AWS. But as you point out, the right usecase for AWS is when you don't mind the cost, and pick it for convenience, and there's the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing you can hire people "off the street" who knows how AWS works.
AWS is the luxury option. Sometimes you want the luxury option.
But it worries me how many startups build in ways that end up locking them into a provider that for some of them multiplies their per user cost by anything from 2x to 10x. When I evaluate startup pitches today, I often ask whether or not they have thought this through. It doesn't matter so much that they're on AWS - that might well be a fine choice. What matters is whether it was a conscious decision, and they've done at least a superficial attempt at modelling the costs both for AWS and some alternatives, rather than just picked it by default.