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It can't hurt that the aforementioned companies, however unprofitable, don't need to spend as much on ops.

You're trading ops costs to be locked into a platform. Does that matter? Probably not if you're targeting being acquired by Google. If you intend to eventually move to your own equipment, it does matter.

There is no such thing as no ops. Only someone else doing ops, no more than I can have TensorFlow write code instead of developers.

Your fear is not invalid. That said, one can make the argument that speed of innovation trumps everything, and partnering with the best innovator is the most important thing when innovating yourself. This is akin to not wanting to ever date for fear of eventual breakup...

Some folks discuss this more elegantly - http://www.cloudtp.com/2016/01/21/dont-let-vendor-lock-in-fe...

You make a good point on No-Ops vs Ops. I think it's a gradient. I also think that Snapchat is on the far far left (on No-Ops edge) against virtually any other large-scale technology company in the world, Google included (singe Google is Snapchat's Ops largely), largely because of the nature of Google AppEngine.

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