Do you think management nodes are free? Master nodes need to run etcd+kube api. These master nodes are multi region available with HA configured, which will be expensive even if you use smaller instances yourself. Google might be free but if you are already in AWS and do not want to manage Kubernetes masters at all and treat your worker nodes like cattle, it is a very nice and enough solution.
What integration do you need? The good thing about EKS is that it is CNCF Conformant Kubernetes, meaning anything works with upstream Kubernetes works here, including ingress controllers that already work with both ALB and ELB+Nginx.
I am not defending Amazon, most of their managed services suck and very slow, but both preview and GA experience of EKS was great and enough for me.
What integration do you need? The good thing about EKS is that it is CNCF Conformant Kubernetes, meaning anything works with upstream Kubernetes works here, including ingress controllers that already work with both ALB and ELB+Nginx.
I am not defending Amazon, most of their managed services suck and very slow, but both preview and GA experience of EKS was great and enough for me.