Microsoft have just unveiled their vision of the future: Cloud Computing, a not altogether new concept but one they think is set to grow and grow. Google have been subtley doing this for a while, but MS reckon that remote applications and data storage is where the future lies:
“Microsoft believes consumers will also want to store far more of their data – from letters to photos to videos – on the servers in its “cloud” of giant data centres around the world, so that it can be accessed anywhere, from any device.”
Hmmm. Not sure about you, but I don’t want all my documents and spreadsheets and personal stuff stored anywhere other than on my PC where I control it. It’s not like I’m short of space and with Gazillion Terrabyte drives now available for little more than a Starbucks Capachino I’m hardly ever likely to be. I can even buy a backup drive and backup software for about £20. In fact I have and I back up once a week. Ok, so one day someone might break in, nick everything I have, find my backup drive and take that. These things happen. But I can think of few problems with remote storage too.
For starters, you pay someone else to store it, probably on a monthly or annual basis. Then what happens when you decide to switch provider? Or worse still, your credit card expires and they can’t debit a payment? Let me guess. “Your account and data is temporarily inaccessible because we control it now“.
Or your Internet access goes down…or your cats are downloading the latest James Bond movie in High definition in preparation for the “Baddie’s Cat Audition”. Either way, just temporarily I’m sure, you can’t access your data. Bummer. “We’re sorry but the data centre will be unavailable for a couple of hours“.
And then there’s any one or more of hackers, fire, data center flooding, terrorists, rogue employees, dodgy hardware, router problems, etc etc. “No, no it will never happen to us“. Maybe it won’t but why would I want want to take the risk when I am in total control at home?
But the biggest worry of all is the USA. From the recent domain name confiscation court case in Kentucky I know that the USA is trying to censor the Internet and everyone knows that they want to control it. This potentially extends to snooping and monitoring everyone and what they do. It’s also apparent that most US companies are happy to hand over any data they are asked to do so. So why on Earth would I want to store my data in a place where quite possibly they could just issue a Court Order and get their hands on all my stuff?
Sorry, but I don’t trust the USA. I want to control my own data thank you.