[sobinator]

Many talking of software here, but at this scale I think we should be looking at the cost of energy. Suppose Google has a true edge on the rest of the market in terms of what the cost of a Watt is to them. Take that outlook over the horizon of 5 years; all software arguments are thereby moot. If Google can generate a Watt in 5 years at 10% the cost that AWS can, then this drastically changes the equation.

[smeyer]

I don't follow these things closely, but what's the reason to expect that Google will be able to generate a watt at 10% of the cost that AWS can? 10x seems like a massively impressive edge to have over another huge player in the market for a commodity good like power.

[sobinator]

Good question. No reason to expect Google beating AWS, but absolutely Google beats Snap on price per Watt if Snap builds this infra out themselves. I'm no expert, but I'd say that when the outlook is five years and you're Google and you have your own internal energy hedge fund, a big margin (perhaps not 10x) is within the realm of possibility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Energy

[specialist]

Exactly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_per_watt