Enterprise is extremely lucrative for them, and their headstart in the AI space may be just what they need to close the gap with AWS.
The 2024 answer is to use it to capture data to train AI.
Microsoft could lose 9/10 of their market share (which they won't) and still have millions of devices harvesting training data for them.
Sure, they might run GCP forever. Sure they may offer some sort of customer service at some point. Sure they may decide to keep pricing at sane levels. The key work in all that is "might" - and that requires my _trust_.
And for better, or worse, my trust simply isn't there.
It was AWS or Azure. AWS didn't have a data center in our country and our customers are required by law to keep their data in the country, so easy win for Azure.
In my experience Azure is really good and getting better. Even if AWS is more popular, Azure is gaining traction, is more intuitive and easier to use, and in my experience: cheaper
Documentation was almost worthless, leaving a lot of room for interpretation. Encountered and filed more bugs trying to get it up and running than I did for years of using Aws. Support was mediocre. Non existent ipv6 support. This was a few years ago and in comparison to Aws.