Is elasticity really an advantage of EC2? Dedicated is so much cheaper that you can just overprovision massively and still come out cheaper than EC2.
Yes, Elasticity is THE advantage for Netflix when it comes to using EC2. Consider the vast differences in usage they have in North America during the evening after dinner vs during the middle of the night. I can only imagine their fleet capacity goes up and down drastically every single day. This amounts to huge savings over having the bare metal.
And EC2 is more than 2x as expensive as dedicated...
Don't get me wrong, EC2 has advantages, but it's not cost (unless Netflix is paying much less than the public prices, which is possible).