After this lesson, you will be able to: Compare AWS, GCP, and Azure; understand why AWS dominates; develop the mental model for thinking about cloud cost.
AWS is the largest cloud provider and the de facto interview standard. This sub-track teaches AWS specifically, but most concepts transfer to GCP and Azure.
This is a free introductory lesson. No purchase required.
AWS (Amazon): ~30-35% market share. Largest service catalog, deepest enterprise. Azure (Microsoft): ~20-25%. Strong in enterprise (Active Directory integration), gaining fast. GCP (Google): ~10-15%. Strong in data + ML; smaller catalog. Others: DigitalOcean / Linode / Vultr for indie / SMB; Cloudflare for edge; Oracle / IBM in legacy enterprise. Pick AWS first; it covers most of the job market. Add Azure if you target Microsoft-heavy industries.
AWS launched in 2006 (S3 + EC2). Half a decade head-start meant huge catalog by the time competitors got serious. Network effects: every SaaS integrates with AWS first; cert programs cover AWS; vast hiring pool. Real lock-in: data egress is expensive; rewriting services to GCP / Azure is months of work. Counter-trends: GCP wins on data + ML at large scale; Azure wins on Microsoft-heavy enterprises. AWS is rarely the WRONG choice; it's almost always the safe one.
Three components: compute (EC2 hours, Lambda invocations), storage (GB-months in S3, EBS, RDS), data transfer (egress is the killer). Egress: free in (data flowing TO AWS), expensive out (data flowing FROM AWS to the internet). $0.09/GB on standard tiers; can dominate the bill at scale. Pricing changes constantly; always check the calculator before estimating. Free tier: 12 months of moderate usage covers most learning. After that, set billing alerts.
12 months free for most learning workloads.
Go to aws.amazon.com/free; sign up with email + credit card (you'll use the free tier; don't enter prod data here)
For learning, use the root account ONLY to create an IAM user. Then NEVER log in as root again.
Enable MFA on the root account (Console → Security credentials → MFA).
Create an IAM user with AdministratorAccess + MFA; use this for everything.
Set a billing alarm at $5, $20, $50.
Download the AWS CLI: aws.amazon.com/cli; configure with `aws configure` using the IAM user's access keys.
Pick the realistic answer.