Another thing just occurred to me: Amazon might just be guilty of recommending to others what worked for them without thinking twice about context, alternatives, etc. Long ago, Anonymous tried a massive DDOS attack on all kinds of sites from Mastercard to Amazon. Of them all, Amazon didn't take a scratch [1]. This was due to their then-new EC2 architecture for handling spikes and a ridiculous amount of spare capacity saved for holidays. Article has the details.

So, maybe it's what's worked for them, their thinking hasn't really changed, and now they're just offering others the same thing? And upselling them in the process? Thoughts?

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/09/technology/amazon_wikileaks_...