I hope there is a way to get some official statement from Amazon, Linode, and other very used VM providers about the kind of memory used in their servers. This would help users understanding the real risks.
I think they don't mention it because they think it to be obvious (I hope). However, with all the special built servers that big providers use to reduce costs, there is some margin to doubt.
I think Google may be able to get away with it. With enough checksums along the way, memory (and other hardware) errors can be detected in software pretty easily if you have independent machines checking the data and can afford the processing penalty.
Now, for virtualization I seriously doubt it. Not unless their instances run simultaneously on more than one machine to check for inconsistencies between them (something that the mainframes do since the dawn of time, but that I don't see as feasible in a distributed environment).
I think Google may be able to get away with it. With enough checksums along the way, memory (and other hardware) errors can be detected in software pretty easily if you have independent machines checking the data and can afford the processing penalty.
Now, for virtualization I seriously doubt it. Not unless their instances run simultaneously on more than one machine to check for inconsistencies between them (something that the mainframes do since the dawn of time, but that I don't see as feasible in a distributed environment).