Even given the limitations of the time (RDBMS cost, 9GB disks, Sun kit, etc), our cost of good sold for that type of workload was exponentially less. (At scale) Today, I could probably run that company off my MacBook Pro and have room to spare.
That said, the rationale for choosing this technology is cute: “After seeing a ton of the best GitHub engineers end up at PlanetScale and seeing the process GitHub went through to issue simple migrations, we chose to use their service.”
If you use the same methodology to choose a database that the public uses to choose between Bud Light, Miller Lite, and Coors Light, expect a suboptimal outcome.
