> AWS is the apex cloud provider on the planet. This isnt about redundancy or best practices.
Sorry, but it is absolutely and undeniably not!
I don't think it's accurate to portray AWS as the underlying infrastructure of the internet on the planet at all.
Speaking of the "planet", here's a sample statistics for .ru ccTLD on web hosting usage across the 1 million domain names in the zone — one of the top-10 ccTLD zones on the planet:
Amazon is dead last #30 with 0.46% of the market; the data is for December 2021, so, it's before any payment issues that would only originate in March 2022, and which would take weeks/months/years to propagate.
Hetzner is far more popular, at 4.11%, also, OVH is bigger than Amazon, too, at 1.38%, and even Wix had 2.16%. Even Google managed to get 1.15%, probably because of their Google Sites service. Most of the rest of the providers are local — that's how it should be if digital sovereignty is of the essence. The real reason for the local providers, however, is most likely affordability, reliability, price, better service and far better support, and not the digital sovereignty considerations at all. This is exactly why Hetzner is at the top, because the market is obviously price-sensitive if the unlimited venture capital was never available for the local startups, and Hetzner and OVH provide the best value for money, whereas AWS, does not.
The earliest data this service currently has, is for March 2020, and there, Amazon didn't even make it in the top-30 at all!
They have a separate tab for VPS and Dedicated, which covers about 0.1 million domain names compared to 1 million in the prior view, and, there, Hetzner, Digital Ocean and OVH, are, likewise, ahead of Amazon, too, with Hetzner being #2, having over 10%, compared to Amazon's 2%, with Amazon thus far behind:
Numbers for 2025 don't look as good for any foreign provider, likely due to a combination of factors, including much stronger data sovereignty laws that may preclude most startups from being able to use foreign services like Hetzner, but Hetzner is still the most popular foreign option in both categories, still having more market share in 2025 than AWS did in 2021, and even DigitalOcean is still more popular than AWS, too.
BTW, I've tried looking up the BBC Radio 4 apocalypse claims, and I'm glad to find out that this information is false.
I'm glad you got your account restored, and I thank you for bringing the much needed attention to these verification issues, but I don't think you're making the correct conclusions here. Not your keys, not your coins. Evidently, this applies to backups, too.
Russia requires a physical presence for services offered in-country, and also Amazon won't provision certificates for .ru domains, so it's not all that surprising they don't host a very high proportion of .ru.
That's just excuses that ignore the fact that AWS was never popular even before any of these restrictions came about.
Many of the providers on those lists are older than AWS, and/or have been in business for many years since before 2010, many for 20 years or more, long before the data sovereignty concerns went mainstream all around the world in the last 10 years.
Sorry, but it is absolutely and undeniably not!
I don't think it's accurate to portray AWS as the underlying infrastructure of the internet on the planet at all.
Speaking of the "planet", here's a sample statistics for .ru ccTLD on web hosting usage across the 1 million domain names in the zone — one of the top-10 ccTLD zones on the planet:
https://statonline.ru/metrics/hosting_shared?month=2021-12&t...
https://archive.ph/7aYVD
Amazon is dead last #30 with 0.46% of the market; the data is for December 2021, so, it's before any payment issues that would only originate in March 2022, and which would take weeks/months/years to propagate.
Hetzner is far more popular, at 4.11%, also, OVH is bigger than Amazon, too, at 1.38%, and even Wix had 2.16%. Even Google managed to get 1.15%, probably because of their Google Sites service. Most of the rest of the providers are local — that's how it should be if digital sovereignty is of the essence. The real reason for the local providers, however, is most likely affordability, reliability, price, better service and far better support, and not the digital sovereignty considerations at all. This is exactly why Hetzner is at the top, because the market is obviously price-sensitive if the unlimited venture capital was never available for the local startups, and Hetzner and OVH provide the best value for money, whereas AWS, does not.
The earliest data this service currently has, is for March 2020, and there, Amazon didn't even make it in the top-30 at all!
https://statonline.ru/metrics/hosting_shared?month=2020-03&t...
https://archive.ph/ciD1X
They have a separate tab for VPS and Dedicated, which covers about 0.1 million domain names compared to 1 million in the prior view, and, there, Hetzner, Digital Ocean and OVH, are, likewise, ahead of Amazon, too, with Hetzner being #2, having over 10%, compared to Amazon's 2%, with Amazon thus far behind:
https://statonline.ru/metrics/hosting_vps_dedic?tld=ru&month...
https://archive.ph/9SPs7
Numbers for 2025 don't look as good for any foreign provider, likely due to a combination of factors, including much stronger data sovereignty laws that may preclude most startups from being able to use foreign services like Hetzner, but Hetzner is still the most popular foreign option in both categories, still having more market share in 2025 than AWS did in 2021, and even DigitalOcean is still more popular than AWS, too.
BTW, I've tried looking up the BBC Radio 4 apocalypse claims, and I'm glad to find out that this information is false.
I'm glad you got your account restored, and I thank you for bringing the much needed attention to these verification issues, but I don't think you're making the correct conclusions here. Not your keys, not your coins. Evidently, this applies to backups, too.