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by zorg42 1420 days ago
It's always the same: you get what you pay for. No company offers something for free: If it doesn't cost anything, you're the product:

They will use usage-data to optimize their commercial offerings, they will try out features in non-critical (aka: free) accounts first - so not to offend the paying customers.

In some cases (e.g. free web-mailers like gmx, Instagram, FB etc) the free versions are mainly vehicles for advertising.

Why should Oracle be any different? I cannot see their motivation to offer anything for free... they are *only* money-driven.
2 comments
xuki 1420 days ago
> I cannot see their motivation to offer anything for free.

Oracle is not alone. AWS/Google Cloud also have free tiers. They want you to get to know the system and might grow out of the free tier. But Oracle's offer is significantly more generous than Amazon's or Google's.

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bombcar 1420 days ago
The free tiers are marketing (and quite powerful at that) - I'm surprised Amazon doesn't match it, but AWS is the big fish in the pond.

If you start playing with a free tier cloud and decide to "go big" you're almost certain to keep using that cloud and begin to pay. (This is the reason that Google will give out nearly infinite "credits" to startups for their cloud, I hear).

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