Our AWS bills are not anywhere close to $600k/month, nor have they ever been. Production is currently around $25k/month. This is down about 87% from this time last year thanks to important technological advancements we've made which includes Hivemind, Appbase, and MIRA. However, these technologies help everyone wanting to build on the Steem blockchain, not just us. This is the ultimate form of dogfooding.
We also support a large amount of the Steem ecosystem via infrastructure that we provide. I welcome more decentralization though and the more people that can rely on their own infrastructure the better off we are as a whole.
We've signed up over 90% of the existing accounts on Steem and continue to do so, and more effectively than ever before.
As you may know, we're also getting ready to release a new front-end product for Steemit.com: Communities. We will not be sunsetting anytime soon.
You should also take a look at what the foundation has been doing to get started as that sounds like a topic you're interested in as well.
Thanks for caring about Steem @ackza - we're all in this together.