Blog post

Amazon Announces EC2 Free Tier

Amazon's new pricing models and free tier for EC2 is an interesting marketing step. The concept of internet populism - which we've talked about extensively - when a company introduces a free product to gain traction in the market, and subsidizes that product with advertising or a la carte options, might see a big jump among other companies with Amazon's adaptation. 

http://aws.amazon.com/free/

More importantly, what does this mean for Amazon's competitors? While you could always sneak your way into free web hosting, cloud instances have never been free - there are many small or boutique hosting firms that offer a great deal for your dollar.