Last week, I watched the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference 2008 ( PDC2008 )- key note by Ray Ozzie the technical visionary for Microsoft, as he announced Azure - Microsofts entry into "Cloud Computing". Essentially an infrastructure of services on the internet. In that discussion he mentioned Amazon's S3 inititiave - which Ozzie indicated was something that Microsoft looked at for their inspiration. If you go to the Amazon site, you see a list of charges - which I imagine could add up over time, but it really depends on how much it gets used.
I suspect that Microsoft will have to be competitive with Azure and its offerings to "be competitive".
One post I saw indicated that Microsoft was not committing to a date on when it would go "commercial" with Azure - which did seem as odd to me too. Almost like they are not sure that this is where things will go - the post I read said that he had asked for one large business that was looking at using Azure for its business - and never got one name.
I suspect that might change by the end of next year, but it is a change in how computing is done, and how the industry is changing. Where the OS is on the internet and you only need a browser instead of a computer - is one thought pattern on that.
I think people like having control of their own computer - so it is not going to control everything.