There are a few factors involved but the biggest ones we aren't discussing are demographic shifts and fashion. We've got an entire new generation of developers entering into the marketplace that have no idea what life was like _before_ cloud computing was a thing, and their priorities are different than simply avoiding some capex and some graybeard sysadmins.

In terms of strategy, AWS is completely and totally unapologetic about copying companies built on top of their platform if it helps them in the future. The author suggest that there haven't been this many companies aimed at the vendors before but that's a lack of insight into the history of how they came about in the first place. When AWS was first launched there were dozens and dozens of vendors competing with, building on top of, and partnering with cloud vendors. Almost none of them exist today.

Snowflake is an incredible exception but not a rule. The reason they succeeded (and the reason I personally believe fly will succeed) is because they're building hard to implement underlying technology and focusing on DX. That's basically it. If you're going to compete on economics you're absolutely hooped.