2) I hate Facebook as a company, but as a builder/scaler of web apps for many years, I'm continually blown away by the speed and reliability of their website. Their operations are mind-blowing.
The only comparable apps (in terms of scale) are Gmail and YouTube, and Gmail is simpler in certain key areas (e.g. mail delivery isn't millisecond-sensitive for a user).
I know nothing about how cryptocurrency works, but wouldn't social media outage sources like multiple server failures, hurricane, tornado, sliced fiber line, etc... affect the kind of cryptocurrency that Facebook is embarking on?
Or is there something in the "distributed" nature of cryptocurrency that makes it more resilient? Is Facebook using that model, too?
It would be interesting to know more details. I bet results are sometimes incomplete, but somehow Google manages to keep the system correct enough nobody notices a sudden quality drop.
I also understood Search has some special QoS at all levels: from the network to the scheduling of jobs...
Their website tech is impressive, I’ll give them that. I still wouldn’t trust them with my money.