{"id":1700,"slug":"s3-launch-march-2006-15-cents-per-gb","title":"Amazon S3 launched March 14, 2006 at $0.15/GB — object storage as a metered utility","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","dev","candid-team"],"topics":["web-tech-history","web-infrastructure","cloud-infrastructure-economics"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** Amazon S3 launched **March 14, 2006** with an initial price of **$0.15/GB**, establishing object storage as a metered pay-as-you-go utility.\n\n**Source:** AWS \"Twenty years of Amazon S3\" blog (https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/).\n\n**Confidence:** Verified.\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** The dated launch price is the primary figure in any \"storage got cheap\" claim. The current price ([[s3-current-price-2-3-cents-per-gb-2025]]) and the magnitude drop ([[s3-price-drop-magnitude-85-percent]]) follow from this anchor. Part of [[timeline-three-drivers-converge-2004-2014]].","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-falling-cost-floor-real-web-functionality-smb-june-2026","title":"Research brief: the falling cost floor of \"real\" web functionality for SMBs (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"s3-current-price-2-3-cents-per-gb-2025","title":"S3 Standard ~$0.023/GB in 2025/2026 (first 50TB), tiering to $0.021/GB","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"s3-price-drop-magnitude-85-percent","title":"S3 storage cost fell ~85% from launch — ~7× more data for the same dollar; independently corroborated","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"capex-to-opex-structural-shift-synthesis","title":"The structural shift: capex (server + sysadmin) → opex (managed service, administration included)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"nyt-ec2-2007-archive-200-dollars","title":"NYT 2007/2008 EC2 archive job — one engineer ran OCR on the paper's scanned archive on a personal credit card for ~$200","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"timeline-three-drivers-converge-2004-2014","title":"Timeline 2004–2014: the decade when each of the three historically-expensive parts independently got cheap","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"rule-three-drivers-decade-2004-2014-not-ai","title":"R1 — Anchor the falling-cost case on the decade 2004–2014 (infrastructure + parts + data); AI-assisted coding is NOT the spine","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"pre-cloud-dedicated-colocation-pricing-2004-2007","title":"Pre-cloud dedicated/colocation pricing 2004–2007 — managed dedicated $250–$1,400/month; budget $89–$199; 1U colo ~$50/month","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rails-open-sourced-july-2004","title":"Ruby on Rails open-sourced July 2004 (DHH from Basecamp); v1.0 December 2005 — convention-over-configuration","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"django-released-2005-batteries-included","title":"Django created 2003 at Lawrence Journal-World; released publicly 2005 — \"batteries-included,\" built-in admin/auth/ORM","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:00.421Z","updated_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:00.421Z"}