In 2021, governments around the world hate the Cloud Czars.
They don’t like seeing companies both build infrastructure and rent it out to competitors. They don’t want Amazon to compete with Netflix or Walmart. They don’t want Microsoft hosting Salesforce, then building its own suite. They don’t like Google doing search while it rents its cloud. They don’t like the Apple app store. They blame Facebook for Trump.
It’s not just here. China is doing all the things Americans just pretend to want, taking down Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu with new regulations and demands. Of course, the same people who want Facebook destroyed pretend that China is going after Alibaba because “it’s communist” and Jack Ma a threat to the regime. (As if Mark Zuckerberg isn’t?)
Here’s the problem. Clouds are expensive. The price started a decade ago at $1 billion/quarter. Now it’s about $5 billion/quarter. That money isn’t borrowed. It all comes from cash flow. The game was said to be too rich for AT&T, too rich for IBM, too rich for HP and Verizon.
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