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Ask HN: At 9 cents/GB downloaded, how can any company afford cloud computing?

2 points by blodovnik ↗ HN
I get it if you generate little traffic, but for any site that generates any substantial traffic, it seems like costs would rapidly go through the roof. Or am I missing some key understanding?

Or is it just that companies pay attention to pricing except for that critical little 9 cent line item?

So if your user watches a 1 gig video, that costs your company 9 cents? Seems like a lot of money.

5 comments

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lostmymind66
Cloud hosting is for companies that have money and don't want to worry about managing everything themselves. You can get much better rates elsewhere.
wmf
Certainly don't serve videos through the cloud. Besides that, if your revenue doesn't cover your cloud bill then your business was never viable anyway.
mneil
I agree with the first response. Cloud is simpler to manage and lowers (typically) the cost to maintain infrastructure. There's the cost, them there's the total cost.

Who is charging 9 cents a gb? S3 transfer cost is .023 cents per gb.

Also, what is the value of your 1gb video to you? Does it drive sales? Does it enhance a brand? What cost are you willing to incur to distribute the content? At some point you're going to pay some amount to do this.