Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is statistically far more likely that your cloud service will go down for hours or days, and you will have no recourse and will just have to wait till AWS manage to resolve it.
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.
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 :)