One of the most famous quotes of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is “Your Margin is My Opportunity”. This illustrates nicely how in the world of Amazon (and in the words of UK’s pop idol Jessie J*): “It’s not about the money³, we do not need your money³, we just wanna make the world dance!”
In the cloud this – a bit unworldly – attitude is fairly normal. Think of Facebook buying WhatsApp for about $ 16 billion, only to make it available for free to large parts of the world via Internet.org. For more traditional competitors this kind of “semi-philanthropic” way of doing business takes some time getting used to.