I suspect that this is really about liability. When AWS goes down you can just throw up your hands, everyone's in the same boat. If your own server goes down you worry that your customers doubt your competence.
It's actually kinda frustrating - as an industry we're accepting worse outcomes due to misperceptions. That's how the free market goes sometimes.
Nobody gets fired for hiring IBM. This is the new version, when you go down because AWS did its someone else’s fault. Of course AWS will compare their downtime to industry standards for on premise and conclude they are down less often. On Premise engineers can say until they are blue that their downtime is on a Sunday at 3 am because it doesn't impact their customers it doesn't seem to matter.
On the other hand when Google mail gies down, I am happy to be in yhe same boat as 2 B people, waiting for the page to refresh.
As opposed to be with the small provider round the corner who is currently having a beer and will look at that tomorrow morning.
Now - I am in the phase where I ap seriously considering to move my email from Google to a small player in Europe (still not sure who) so this is what may ultimately be my fate :)
It's actually kinda frustrating - as an industry we're accepting worse outcomes due to misperceptions. That's how the free market goes sometimes.