In the real world, it's rare to find a non trivial business where operational costs to its problem size scales linearly. Let's take an example of search. If t h

In the real world, it's rare to find a non trivial business where operational costs to its problem size scales linearly. Let's take an example of search. If t he web size grows by 10x; this not only means # of your user grows by 10x but also # of web pages to be indexed, size of the ranking model, ratio of unstructured/dynamic content formats, faster pace of content updates, reduced informational density of overall web, size of user logs, advanced SEO, (those are just a tip of iceberg, there are so many other stuffs) etc etc... Every single dimension scales and stacks up. And you need to handle all of that within a limited latency budget where you cannot really make any compromises.