This is not fully correct. It is correct that the CPU time has be been stolen, BUT nobody told that you will be the only one who will be getting a physical CPU. AWS gives you specific part of CPU and the one that is not committed to your server is seen as seal time. This is normal. Note that the seal time stays on virtually constant level. Even if your neighbor wasn't busy you would still not get additional CPU as AWS does not allow CPU bursting (using unused CPU) to other instance types than Micro, which I've read is actually running on second priority on otherwise unused CPU cycles.
This is true that they could push content. Though, there is a slight difference - a user subscribes or wants a given content. Obviously they want it to be created there, but it could help in transition of some users ... like me.
Everybody says AWS has so low margins. I don't really get it. There are really number of other providers who are much cheaper. Just see here - http://www.cloudorado.com/ . If AWS has so low margin, what margins have others?
Sounds like a price war started between Google and Amazon. Good :) Hopefully other providers will join.
BTW - you can compare cloud prices at http://www.cloudorado.com
I would also suggest taking into account other cloud options. Amazon is very often not the cheapest option. Just compare it here: http://www.cloudorado.com/
While maybe more expensive then US locations, it is still very competitive compared to other (few) Australian options - http://www.cloudorado.com/#;(r:(r:5)))
Try using http://www.cloudorado.com/ . You just specify your requirements (RAM, CPU, subscription duration) and it finds appropriate options for you, including reserved, packages, etc. And it will give you price not only of AWS but other clouds a well.
Try http://www.cloudorado.com/ it does exactly that. You specify the requirements (RAM, CPU, etc) and it finds appropriate options from multiple providers.
For competition, there are already other services backed by large companies: MS Azure added VMs recently, HP Cloud, IBM Smart Cloud, Rackspace obviously. And there are also many other providers. So competition is there already. You can compare prices with http://www.cloudorado.com/ and you may already find AWS is quite often not so cheap. So why Google is supposed to change the picture that much?
You should try comparing cloud computing services with http://www.cloudorado.com/ . It calculates price for specified resources from multiple providers. And for CPU comparison based on the same benchmark across all providers, so it is using the same unit.
I was more contributing to Stack Overflow than asking. Frankly I used Stack Overflow just once to ask a question for a problem I though had no solution. And surprisingly I got the solution within a day. The best resource for programmers ever!
AWS is cost effective in some scenarios while not in others. It really strongly depends on actual needs, what resources are needed, in what proportion, etc. There is an article which tries to answer if Amazon is really the cheapest provider: http://blog.cloudorado.com/2011/08/is-amazon-cheapest-cloud-...
You can compare the prices with custom configurations of multiple providers with Cloudorado - http://www.cloudorado.com.
OK, I might not understand what is so special about Stripe. But as for cost they charge for transactions, for typical payment channels 2.8% + ~10c (0.30 PLN), but may vary on some payment channels. There might be a minor activation cost of about $3.
In Poland (Europe) there are plenty of Stripe-like services for several years now. They mostly integrate all online payments (online wire transfers, credit cards) but also offline, where you can pay in your local shop, post office or traditional bank transfer. Virtually all banks in the Polish marked are handled. Almost no e-shop will handle payments themselves, especially that integration modules to most of e-commerce software are provided. Therefore I wonder how can it be so different in other parts of Europe?