[grkvlt]

I think (based on your child comment too) that you're conflating AWS and Amazon. Amazon sells things and also allows you to sell things, and that creates a conflict of interest, which has apperently caused problems. I am unsure how much of the problem was direct maliciousness on Amazon's part, admittedly - I suspect naivete on the part of some marketplace users, imagining that Amazon would never sell the same product as them, or would never lower the price of a competing product. Certainly it would seem obvious not to try and compete with Amazon on price or availability, you will always lose eventually.

However, AWS is a different thing altogether - it is a set of services that can be used to run parts of your business. Now, if your business involves simply reselling those services, or is predicated the availability and pricing of one of those services being a major part of the value for a service you sell (i.e. the value you add is marginal, with the majority of the product or service's value residing in the service AWS provides) then you are again in a situation where AWS may also decide to offer the same service, and will probably be able to do so more cheaply and profitably.

Again, this would not be a malicious act or directed attack on your business through inside information, and it seems naiive to assume so. You must have been able to determine a market existed and a need could be fulfilled profitably by providing this service, there is no reason a company like AWS could not reach the same conclusion with its vastly larger amount of resources. The possibility of this sort of thing happening should have been determined during due diligence and market analysis anyway, so it should not be a surprise if it happens.

But companies in traditional lines of business using AWS to save money, or using AWS to build a product where the value provided to the customer is inherent in the service provided, not the infrastructure used, are going to be fine. Nobody worries about the electricity company stealing your idea for a product run using electricity...