Their original statement was "we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on storing and hosting the data" that was scraped from the Pebble app store. So, explicitly not on the other services. I have to agree with other commenters that $200,000+ seems like an extravagant bill for hosting this data for 8 years with a web frontend and maybe 20,000 users.
I think this is a bit of a disingenuous reading of the article when the surrounding text states:
> Since then, we built a replacement app store API that was compatible with the old app store front end. We built a storage backend for it, and then we spent enormous effort to import the data that we salvaged. We’ve built a totally new dev portal, where y’all submitted brand new apps that never existed while Pebble was around. [...] And the App Store that we’ve built together is much more than it was when Pebble stopped existing. We’ve patched hundreds of apps with Timeline and weather endpoint updates. We’ve curated removal requests from people who wanted to unpublish their apps. And it has new versions of old apps, and brand new apps from the two hackathons we’ve run!
None of that is included in their statement that "we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on storing and hosting the data". If they meant that they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on building a dev portal, patching apps, and the other stuff you mention, they should have said that instead of "storing and hosting the data".
You are choosing a very literal interpretation, which is fine, if you think it is useful. To me, it looks disingenuous and irrelevant. The hosting and storage of that data would have been pointless without this additional development. And arguably, the app store development _is_ part of hosting it.
