
Data Center Overload - anirudh
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14search-t.html?_r=1&hp
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whatusername
"it is estimated that a 100-millisecond delay reduces Amazon’s sales by 1
percent."

Can any of the bright minds here shed some light on this? 100ms doesn't seem
at all enough to have that big an impact. (especially for something like
amazon - where there is likely some level of intent and definate trust that
the site is valuable). I just can't see how a .1sec delay could affect so many
sales?

~~~
puzzle-out
[http://www.drunkenfist.com/304/2008/12/29/why-front-end-
perf...](http://www.drunkenfist.com/304/2008/12/29/why-front-end-performance-
matters-to-everyone/)

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whatusername
:) Thanks (all) for responding. I guess I never realised how much of amazons
purchases must be spur-of-the-moment. (NOTE: I order stuff from amazon - but
usually in groups as I'm shipping it to australia - so all of my stuff is
planned - i'm going there to buy something)

But - if anyone has the metrics to prove a figure like that - it would be
amazon.

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akamaka
Edit: whoops. this is supposed to be a response to the first comment.

I would guess that the 1% figure is the average loss for each 100ms of
latency. So if it took 5 seconds longer to load each page, 50% less people
would ultimately make a purchase.

Which is still a very high number, and makes me wonder if most of Amazon's
customers are impulse shoppers, or whether these numbers were just fabricated
to help sell AWS.

Either way, it's not a very meaningful without knowing the context and overall
probability distribution of lost sales vs. latency.

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kierank
Printable Link:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14search-t.html?_...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14search-t.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=print)

EDIT: Doesn't work unless you have the correct Referer...

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weatherboard
I think the last point was the most interesting.. data substations. Every
suburb/town could have a data substation that all connect to form the cloud.
computing as a service, exactly the same as electricity. shit is about is get
interesting.

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Andys
Isn't the logical conclusion that every one's PC inside their own home forms
part of the cloud?

It reminds me of a joke business plan developed over some beers: Provide free
electric heaters for old people to run in winter, which were actually PCs
connected to a phoneline doing data-intensive grid computing :-)

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TrevorJ
"Google search is not without environmental consequence — 0.2 grams of CO2 per
search, the company claims"

I wonder how that compares to the CO2 cost of driving to the library to look
up the same bit of information for the average person?

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razorburn
It's a fallacious analogy. People didn't use to drive to the library to look
up tidbits of info - search engines create new demand. Also, use of libraries
has gone up greatly since they began installing computers for patrons. So
driving to libraries is increasing even as Net use is increasing.

