Former Schwarz employee here: The company made SO much money in the past 4 decades with big box / discount retailing, you won't believe it. Salaries are off the charts (it would make senior software engineers in SV look pale). Hubris is as well. The only thing that drives reasoning are statements like 'we're not just some random company, we're Schwarz Group'. It's the poster child Corp described by Andy Gorves statem…
This is exactly what I have guessed. Many people think that replicating AWS is just the question of money. It is not. Most of the great datacenter people are hired by AWS, MS and Google. These are the guys who can think of cost efficient reliable solutions, quite often inventing new things in the process that the outside world has no idea. I was watching countless videos while working for Amazon about the data center tech. Mind blown, every single time. I seriously doubt that the Schwarz group will be able to attract the talent to replicate this. Many of the AWS guys are life timers, do not care about money. What is a more likely scenario that they will burn through a few billion EUR before realizing that they know nothing about cloud computing and cut their losses.
It is going to be interesting to watch though.