There are places other than AWS to host.

It's always possible. But I haven't seen anything that would imply this to be the case so far in all the years I've been reading this.

What Backblaze is doing here is so underrated. This a large scale, practical, in-datacenter real data on essential hardware infrastructure that is available almost nowhere else, and they provide it, and their excellent analysis, completely for free.

I miss this culture and I admire leadership that allows it to not only exist, but thrive. I fear the day a stockholder meeting occurs and someone wringing their hands see the decommissioned pennies they can save by limiting or stopping these reports.

What is most upsetting is that they just offered access to the large commercial AI providers and no clear way to have a self-hosted or alternative option. THIS is where they lost their way. They must be profiting or partnering, no longer serving the community.

"At Google" is doing all the heavy lifting in your comment here, with all due respect. There is but one Google but remain millions of us who are not "At Google".