your mileage may vary...

“When you talk to other entrepreneurs and tell them you’re using Microsoft’s cloud services, they look at you like you have leprosy,” says Jeremy Howard, chief scientist at Kaggle, a San Francisco startup that runs data analytics contests. Howard, however, maintains that Silicon Valley’s startup class has let biases get in the way of reality. Kaggle began its business on Amazon’s data-center rental service but has since moved to Azure, which has proved easier to use and better at handling the massive calculations Kaggle performs. “I love it,” Howard says. Microsoft has brought Kaggle into a program in which it gives startups free access to its software and developer tools. “We didn’t even reach out to them,” Howard says. “They came to us, and do their best to make sure you don’t have to pay a dime.”