Comment by bastardoperator

Considering the cost of the infra it would take to replicate some of these services, not to mention bandwidth, DC, and electricity costs, you're probably still saving money. You're absolutely saving on Network Ops and Data Center Ops not to mention the huge investment in gear one has to make. A single server can cost over 100K. Network gear can costs way more. The fact that you don't have to make those investments is the allure. At a certain point, you might outgrow someones else's cloud and build your own, but that divide is a fairly large threshold to cross.