Actually the cloud IS for our startup. We used Appengine to launch and have had no reason to even consider moving to bare metal. We've been successful and are g

Actually the cloud IS for our startup. We used Appengine to launch and have had no reason to even consider moving to bare metal. We've been successful and are growing nicely, generating six figures of annual revenue - and paying Google three figures annually. For that, we've got a team of the world's best sysadmins working for us. And if we hit the express elevator, it'll scale as far as we need without us lifting a finger. We'll be popping champagne corks - not server cores. And best of all, we can focus entirely on what we do best - developing great web apps. We don't have to take weeks out at a time to migrate to bigger machines or the latest operating system. Every time a new exploit comes out, we don't have to drop everything to check we're safe. I don't lie awake at night wondering what would happen if a disk drive crashed or a power supply blew. Obviously your mileage may vary, depending on exactly what your startup does. But you'd be a fool to discount the cloud on the basis of one article on HN.