If you are doing just one or two things at a massive scale (Dropbox storing files), it makes sense. But, we are talking about Snap Inc, the infrastructure, and services it needs. A single high-speed intercontinental fiber cable costs 400 Million $ (https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/12/google-and-facebook-are-bu...). To build a service like CLoudML (Hosted TensorFlow), you need to write software (TensorFlow), build the ASIC Chips by manufacturing / by partnering with a chip manufacturing company like Intel / Samsung / Qualcomm, you need custom networking software and hardware to scale massively for data workloads (Andromeda), years of research to build these tools, you need to create your own programming language (Go and Dart) to be able to scale your development to these levels, you need to build data centers in multiple regions, you need to build DeeLearning models for cooling your data centers (https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces-google-data-ce...), ...
Re:Snap Inc. S-1
by krakensden on Friday February 03, 2017 @12:35AM
(#13557945)
Why would you write your own Tensorflow and Dart and Go when you can use them free of charge?
That was his/her point.
I would simply say "it depends". For companies with specific use cases, e.g. Dropbox, it makes A LOT of sense to build at least 60-70% private, and the rest on AWS or GCP. Snapchat looks like a special case to me.