What is rather mind boggling is that Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo all have multiple, huge data center installations and, they are all profitable companies. It does not seem to be a zero-sum game yet for market share, and the growth in the world's appetite for storage and access is still not fully served. Can they all wind up 'winning' with profitable operations founded on web infrastructure?
How much storage does one Internet citizen occupy, anyway?
"How much storage does one Internet citizen occupy, anyway?"
That number chases toward infinite. Its growth may slow down, as we reach the limit of how many 'actions' a person can reasonable take that generates content, but it'll never stop growing just on the basis of the unlimited desire for higher quality experiences (mixed with a general moore's law ride that makes it all financially reasonable).
And just when you think storage demand is going to slow down, we'll jump to some kind of virtual reality life recording, that makes it possible for others to walk around in your daily life as though they're actually there, and storage demand will explode another magnitude.
You can remove Facebook and Yahoo from that list though. Their operations are funded by their core businesses and they don't compete in the AWS-style cloud segment. That is, it doesn't make sense to discuss Facebook in regard to whether it can win or make money, compared to AWS or Azure.
So is there room for Google, AWS, Azure, Rackspace, IBM etc? Yep. It's a future hundred billion dollar plus business (AWS will probably be at $10b+ in a few years). No reason there can't be three or four big players in such a large market.
How much storage does one Internet citizen occupy, anyway?