Of course it sucks, It's techcrunch, they can't actually write about tech. A bunch of vaguely clued in non-techies writing about tech companies for AOL don't target an audience that wants to hear about server hardware. They want to hear about how great (innovative, rule-breaking, etc...) facebook is. If server hardware is the vehicle for that story, so be it.

This article is "company finds business value in customizing critical component instead of using COTS." And that's only interesting to people who understand the components. So they represent it poorly, but only a little bit, not badly enough to merit the weight we typically associate with the word "misrepresentation".

[Of course, but here is a little story]

I recently heard of a legal principle having to do with what they termed "overbroad" interpretation. The idea is, if there is a law in the United States that could be used to violate the constitution, the whole law gets struck down -- this is often limited to e.g. a subsection. But notably, it doesn't change the law to be the same except in cases where it violates the constitution, it just implodes the law. There's something to be said about the principle of throwing away any system or subsystem that doesn't get the job done, and not just forking and patching it.