hrm. I recently left one of Eric B's teams, and no more than 7 months ago he held a meeting where he said (essentially) that hardware cost more than people's time.

I'm not sure what has changed since then. I still work there (for the next 3 days anyway), and I know the cost structure of people vs. hardware hasn't changed dramatically. Guess it must be the burning desire to catch some of the Facebook "platform" love.