They're probably using EC2s and then it's a function of how many pages can be scrapped per EC2 compute hour and then taking a premium on top of that. The reaso

They're probably using EC2s and then it's a function of how many pages can be scrapped per EC2 compute hour and then taking a premium on top of that. The reason why they didn't want it to be too expensive (ie. 5 times as expensive) is (1) competitors can easily equilibrate and steal market share if their idea works b/c of the economic inefficiencies in their pricing model and (2) this game plan is more a game of dependence rather than up front profits, so it makes sense to take very little profit up front to get user traction.