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"A more useful analysis would be to estimate the marginal cost of each additional search (e.g. if I go make a search right now, how much extra does that cost Go
by praptak 16y ago
"A more useful analysis would be to estimate the marginal cost of each additional search (e.g. if I go make a search right now, how much extra does that cost Google?)."
Interesting, but tricky. Is the price of the new servers they need to buy for the peak processing marginal or fixed cost?
- ma2rten 16y agoMarginal, but you would have to multiply it by the fraction of times that happens, so it would still be quite low.
- praptak 16y agoI agree in principle, but this fraction would be easy to get if they just had to buy a server after a fixed number of clicks. But they only have to if the peak usage grows. Peak usage grows, they buy some servers, then go on for some time processing huge amounts of clicks. Things might get even more complicated if they decide to spend the (now) excess processor power on something else.
- Wilduck 16y agoFixed, because it happens in the long run. That is, they can't buy another server in response to your additional search.