CloudFlare is not a tier 1 cloud provider.
Yes, you're legally correct, but the point is AWS are clearly overcharging for egress.
As you say:
> Egress pricing pays for the AWS network infrastructure that is incredibly reliable (hardware failures happen regularly yet almost no one notices) and allows it to operate at scale sufficient to absorb even the largest DDoS attacks.
Cloudflare is also pretty good at absorbing DDoS attacks, yet charge no egress costs.
Maybe the real question is, are the tier-1 providers colluding in overcharging for egress?
Egress costs are fairly clearly a vendor lock in strategy. If I want to transfer 1TB to run on cheaper compute at another provider, that costs me $90 (edit) on AWS as opposed to $0.24 at wholesale prices. It's unlikely to be cost effective so I choose AWS compute.
EDIT: thanks to someonebaggy for pointing out my decimal point error.
Ninety dollars to transfer a terabyte is clearly ridiculous.
Many people avoid T1 clouds because they're so expensive, but they seem to have found an extremely profitable market segmentation consisting of the remainder.