To be slightly pedantic, I did assert that and I do live on Earth :-). But to be fair, the claim is a way of illustrating the challenge.

In the goods economy the analysis of a widget factory and the widget business might reasonably start with the cost to the factory of the parts that were consumed in assembling a widget. This is something of a game where folks tear down the electronics of our age and tell you what the cost is of each of the parts in the gizmo. So we'll start with "An iPhone is only $245 in parts."[1] and it cost $650[2]. And then start walking through the costs that are also incurred by the widget maker until you run out of costs and are left with profit (or loss).

And one way in which we know that its not too far off to consider that as the first cost are Google's public statements about power efficiency[3]. Power is their "raw material of most impact."

And that is another way of saying that without R&D or Sales or Marketing people could buy and use their product but without power or "a little bit of ops" they have no business. And since HWOPS/SRE are the goods economy equivalent of factory workers and manufacturing engineers, an information business' core production capability is just those groups and the electricity they use.

Of course if you really want to get metaphysical consider who pays for the electrons and photons that compose the product as it moves from data center to my computer screen. Its like a giant marble game where the electrons cascade through the chips, one of which turns them into photons, and theh they fly through a fiber and kick of another cascade of electrons which result in more photons, and they bounce through the system until the photons they create emerge from my screen in the form of a search result.

[1] http://www.techinsights.com/teardown.com/apple-iphone-6s/

[2] http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone6s

[3] The system cut power usage in the data centers by several percentage points, "which is a huge saving in terms of cost but, also, great for the environment," he said. -- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-19/google-cu...