No not really, nobody has to be using AWS itself per se to be honest, there are still alternatives around.

I mean I own a 7$/yr vps that I pay with crypto and my stack usually involves golang/rust and oh I also self host my mail for temp-mail esque things on that server and I have some other servers floating around as well.

Its just that everyone uses AWS which is the wrong issue here to be honest. If you ask me, aside from the ram pricing caused by AI inflation, things are pretty good. The issue is that not many people know about server providers and other things and default to AWS/Azure etc. because big companies and small companies alike are using them.

Here's a global (interactive) visualization of around ~250 providers, 224 locations and 800 distinct links in 60 countries that I have made if this space interests ya: https://buyvds.net