Taking that digression for a moment: realise that in technology, with Moore's Law affecting at least costs if not capacity, we're in a situation where roughly every ten years, the cost of provisioning some level of service falls by a factor of roughly tenfold.
Facebook was about 10x easier to implement than Google was. Google was about 10x easier to implement than Microsoft during its 1980s peak. And whatever eats Facebook starting today will be roughly 10x easier than it was.
This also has something to say about maintaining incumbency, when faced with the duality of a 10x cheaper upstart and accumulating technical debt, though there may be compensation in institutional expertise and market positioning, especially as regards customer and business partnerships.
I find your comment insightful... And I'm not really sure why both your comment and mine have been downvoted to negative values. Is this discussion considered off-topic?
Facebook was about 10x easier to implement than Google was. Google was about 10x easier to implement than Microsoft during its 1980s peak. And whatever eats Facebook starting today will be roughly 10x easier than it was.
This also has something to say about maintaining incumbency, when faced with the duality of a 10x cheaper upstart and accumulating technical debt, though there may be compensation in institutional expertise and market positioning, especially as regards customer and business partnerships.