Earlier this month, it looked like Google was starting a cloud computing price war.

Now we have some extra salvos. But these cuts might be more appealing for developers and IT departments.

On Wednesday, Amazon announced it would be significantly slashing the prices of its cloud computing platforms—famous for running the infrastructure of services as diverse as Reddit, Pinterest, and Netflix. Some of the drops are more modest, but others represent a price decrease of as much as 65 percent.

But Amazon wasn’t even first to the market with the cloud infrastructure price cuts. On Tuesday, Google made a very similar move, promoting the fact that the more you use its cloud platform to build out your infrastructure, the cheaper prices will be.

Speaking of small numbers and the cloud, you have to feel for Box CEO Aaron Levie, who gave up 94 percent of his stake in his own company on the road to winning over investors and earning an IPO. (It’s still a lot of money; it’s just not a lot of his own company.)

Thank This Guy

I am starting Follow Fridays. Every Friday, suggest a person to follow, and everyone follow him/her. Today its @fancyjeffrey & @w1redone.

— Micah Baldwin (@micah) January 16, 2009

https://twitter.com/micah/status/449579627204206592

These days, you may take for granted the basic concept of #FollowFriday as part of your Twitter marketing strategy—or maybe you’ve moved on from it entirely! But surprisingly, there’s one guy you can thank for the tweet-culture phenomenon: His name is Micah Baldwin, and he’s the CEO of Graphicly. Check out a little oral history of the concept on BetaBeat.

Other Good Reads

The Atlantic wonders why we’re all so stressed out.

On the other end of the spectrum, “Happy Black Woman” Rosetta Thurman talks about the distractions that keep you from being more productive.

How do you make crowdfunding work for nonprofits? Craig “Craigslist” Newmark has an infographic on the matter.

Do you really need to spend $10,000 on a video project? Steve Drake ponders this question.

(iStock/Thinkstock)