[polishTar]

I'd also argue that "sufficient demand" is a threshold that's been rising very fast over the last couple of years and likely to continue doing so.

This also explains why older tech companies disproportionately use their own hardware, even those that aren't all that big. They all made that decision at a time when it made sense and the switching cost is sufficiently high to prevent them from turning back now.

I doubt there are many rational cases now for newer companies to use anything but the cloud. Even at the scale of Snapchat (>3B$ infrastructure spend over next 5 years) and Netflix, it appears the public cloud is still the rational choice.

[tbrowbdidnso]

You should remember that the early cloud unicorns are getting super low rates for their name clout as well. Their discounts are passed as extra costs to everyone else.

So while it may be worthwhile if you're huge enough to get a big discount, that doesn't mean it applies to small or medium size companies