Joshua Drake’s recent article makes some interesting points, but there’s one thing in particular I find missing among many of these discussions. From the article:
It appeared they felt we should be impressed that Facebook runs on MySQL not PostgreSQL. … The problem I have, is that Facebook data is worthless.
All of the concentration is on the company, and whether their use case matters (of course it does, at least to them and their customers). But phrases like “runs on” and “uses” are used too loosely, in my opinion.
Even with celebrity endorsements — for example, a basketball player endorsing shoes — at least they use shoes in roughly the same manner as you might. The shoes might not help you play basketball in any appreciable way, but at least “use” means the same for both the basketball player and you.