Is "Cloud Computing" just hype?

I’m reading up on “cloud computing” and I can’t help but wonder if it’s just marketing hype. Microsoft has devoted a considerable amount of effort in selling their Windows “Azure” platform and Amazon has been offering AWS for quite some time.

However, I don’t see how this is any different than creating a web application and hosting it on a web host like Godaddy or Discount ASP.NET. Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t see paying per transaction when all I have to do is create and host my web app on my web host.

I guess I have some more learning to do.