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If I remeber correctly, their Now service uses several cloud vendors, they let you choose where you want to deploy, including Azure. Now, Up, Netflify and other services like that are basically providing a better UX for a special audience on top of those clouds, that better UX is what you pay for.

I don't think it's a very direct competitor. They probably use zeit for publishing design prototypes (or a similar use case).

They use Macs too.

That's probably to copy someone else ideas without doing their own research?

Everyone copies. Heck, you're probably part of those who mocked Microsoft for its abysmal returns on its $10+ billion per year research expenditure.

They contrasted this with Apple who spent less than $3B (at the time) on research with crazy returns on investment.

Immediate profit from research isn't guaranteed. The rule is copy where necessary or die.