{"id":1743,"slug":"nyt-ec2-2007-archive-200-dollars","title":"NYT 2007/2008 EC2 archive job — one engineer ran OCR on the paper's scanned archive on a personal credit card for ~$200","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","smb-owner","candid-team"],"topics":["web-tech-history","cloud-infrastructure-economics"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** The **New York Times** 2007/2008 use of EC2 — a single engineer ran OCR over the paper's scanned archive on a personal credit card for **~$200**. A documented, public illustration that compute-heavy work that was \"cost-prohibitive\" became trivially affordable.\n\n**Source:** GeekWire AWS history.\n\n**Confidence:** Verified.\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** The single best worked example of \"the floor fell\" — a task that would have required a six-figure capex purchase the year before became a $200 weekend project. Anchors the \"real work, real cheap\" framing in any cost-floor article.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"s3-launch-march-2006-15-cents-per-gb","title":"Amazon S3 launched March 14, 2006 at $0.15/GB — object storage as a metered utility","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"ec2-launch-august-2006-ten-cents-per-hour","title":"Amazon EC2 launched as limited public beta August 25, 2006 — single m1.small instance at $0.10/hour","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-falling-cost-floor-real-web-functionality-smb-june-2026","title":"Research brief: the falling cost floor of \"real\" web functionality for SMBs (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:00.664Z","updated_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:00.664Z"}