[irrational]

It's not necessarily the same in outcome. Undercutting competitors can be a temporary thing. As soon as the competitors are eliminated you jack the prices up. Doing it to be nice to customers can potentially last even after competitors go belly up. Then again, Google's motto used to be "do no evil" (basically be nice to customers). That obviously went the way of the dodo bird.

[Lord_Baltimore]

>>As soon as the competitors are eliminated you jack the prices up

And then you provide a competitor or startup another opportunity.

[irrational]

Eventually. But Amazon has the headspace to drop prices for as long as they need to kill the new competition. Only someone like Google or MS will be able to keep up as long as they can automate a lot and use money from ads or software licenses to prop up their cloud business.