A useful reminder: Brin and Page raised $100K in their angel round (from Andy Bechtolsheim). Their company HQ was a friend's garage.
The problem is that while hardware, cloud, bandwidth, etc. has collapsed in prices since the late 90s, real estate has arguably undergone hyperinflation. As a result, people can't cope with low salaries as easily unless they're just-out-of-college types with no footprint.
Except people.