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I think what zmmmmm had in mind is the mindset difference between unmetered usage and metered usage. For unmetered usage, imagine that due to some circumstance

I think what zmmmmm had in mind is the mindset difference between unmetered usage and metered usage. For unmetered usage, imagine that due to some circumstances, you end up having exclusive access to 2 powerful physical machines where you could do anything you want. These machines will be idling 95% of the time, but when you need it, they are ready to serve you immediately, with zero friction. For metered usage, that would be public cloud, as you described.

username90 6y ago
The workers I had at Google were definitely metered, just that the quota we have was very high so a thousand workers was no big deal as long as you turned them down after. I mean, if you give engineers cloud computing resources equal to a few percent of the cost of having said engineer then you can do this easily. And why not give them that? 20 engineers and $100k worth of experimental cloud quota is worth a lot more than 21 engineers and very limited cloud quota, at least if they are working with data pipelines and such.