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by adventured 3562 days ago
> Why would Amazone create a pricing structure which encourages new entrants into the field?

Because the primary entrant threats were not going to be dissuaded by low price competition. Specifically Microsoft and Google. Both are hyper cash and income rich and under no circumstances did they want to cede the cloud computing universe to Amazon. Fundamentally it's the exact same reason AWS stopped trying to compete so intensely on price cuts quite a while back now.

Put another way, if you're going up against Google, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle - speaking hypothetically it's better to own 1/3 of the market and print significant operating income, than to own 1/2 of the market and barely make money. That operating income is responsible for roughly doubling the value of Amazon's share price (the stock took off like a rocket after it became clear AWS was going to be a cash-cow).

1 comments

Good answer. That's pretty sound strategy, and clarifies the market for me.