@Otto - the use of different clouds is attractive/smart, and I know that cloud storage is relatively expensive per GB but is it really $25 per month expensive? Even using replicating the data in two or three different places?

Using Amazon as a yardstick, we're talking around 15c per GB of storage, and the same per GB of transfer, even at the most expensive pricing tiers. The vast majority of WordPress sites have far, far less than a GB of data and would be adding far less again in posts per month, mostly text.

If the cost of cloud services is seriously being put forward as a justification for the price, it means that all the sites which produce mostly text content will be subsidising the handful of extremely active photographers who aren't already using Flickr ($25 per YEAR) or the even fewer video-makers who aren't already using YouTube or VideoPress.

Again, the advanced features are what is selling this to me but I would love to see Automattic have the balls to pursue the mass market by getting the price beneath the $100 per year barrier.