They all play tricks. Google does flat rate ELAs, so customer retention and recurring spend is something to look for information on. Microsoft does alot of SaaS bundling and uses the EAs to drive revenue. (Buy an azure gift card vs. true up of whatever)
At some point it becomes like a “no true Scotsman” argument. They’re all big, and all use their niche to drive spend. IMO HN commentators comparing GCP to Stadia are missing the boat. Likewise, MS will figure out how to monetize the bazillion O365 users with Azure.
I wonder how good of a proxy this is for actual use. I trust Google's numbers (unless Azure users are all using Bing), so I read this was AWS is by far the leader, with GCP possibly being second.
I believe “Azure” includes simply hosting some ppl’s legacy systems in dedicated servers (a State Farm no longer has to have sysadmins or hardware on its balance sheet) and even “on prem azure” which is…you still have your own computers!
"Azure" includes Office 365 so MSFT can pretend Azure is 3x bigger than it is: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techtarget.com/searchcloudc...