Perhaps you should have read that wikipedia page before so helpfully linking to it. There&#x27;s nothing about &quot;middlemen&quot; there. &quot;Rent&quot; is political economy jargon; it&#x27;s not just a synonym for &quot;distasteful practices&quot;. Adam Smith wasn&#x27;t complaining about shopkeepers or shipping companies, and he certainly wasn&#x27;t talking about &quot;back end&quot; software services. There is no royal decree enforcing how such services shall be provided. If you don&#x27;t like AWS then use GCP.