alt Hacker News> Cloud providers have to buy new hardware too to grow and to replace failing/obsolete units.
They can negotiate better prices based on their scale, and even on their ability to internally source key components if needed.
E.g. if AWS/Microsoft/Google/Apple buy 80% of Micron's entire output it's probably at a much better price than the rest of us competing over the other 20% are going to get.
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It’s probably cheaper per unit when they buy at massive scale, but that was also true before the hardware inflation of the past couple of years. So I’m sure they are still paying much higher prices than in previous years. Many cloud services have increased prices and I suspect that will continue for at least a few more years.
And yet they remain an expensive option.
Even just going to second tier cloud providers will tend to let you rent similar capacity much cheaper.
AWS and the other big cloud providers only gets close to cost efficient when you're big enough to negotiate prices that are nowhere near their public list prices.
> They can negotiate better prices based on their scale, and even on their ability to internally source key components if needed.
A global supply chain storage is a global supply chain shortage.
Most famous recent example being Apple who were absorbing the rapidly increasing cost of supply until even they had to put up the prices to reflect procurement and manufacturing reality.
And this is Apple. The company that even buys its manufacturers plant equipment in return for it being dedicated to Apple.
Yes the big boys get volume discount. But that doesn't magically entitle them to last decades's pricing.