Yeah, I don't get these articles (with this one being pretty similar in tone to the 'Hetzner is 4x cheaper than AWS' one I saw on here earlier today).

If all you need is simple compute and bandwidth, and you can spare the resources to admin a server, of course you'll be able to find colocated, dedicated-server or even VPS solutions that fit your requirements and are way cheaper than AWS/Azure/GCS/etc.

The whole selling point of 'cloud' is that you can scale infinitely at a moment's notice and have a whole array of batteries-included services at your disposal. Don't need that? Don't do it, even if it's fashionable...