Is the “killer app” argument dead?

The browser is the new desktop. Google and Yahoo get it. That's why Yahoo has its YUI widget kit and Google has Google Gears.

Credit where due: Microsoft was a bit ahead of the game on this one. In the late 90's, their Outlook web interface was remarkably similar to the Outlook local client interface. If you already knew how to use the application, you could use it in your browser as well.

OTOH, there have also been some really bad ideas for apps to make "web-enabled," like the corporate finance system that was 95% COBOL under the hood, with a Windows interface already bolted on "because everything is Windows now!". The CEO decided to "web-enable" it... and ended up selling the company two years later, to avoid bankruptcy court.

I'm a huge user -- and huge fan -- of Google Docs, but Google Docs with Gears is a huge disappointment. Lost databases, incomplete features, slow (did I say slow?). There's much work to be done before Google has offline right.

Once I had to do actual work offline with Google Docs, I ran quickly back into the welcoming, working arms of OpenOffice Writer.

I prefer to own my data.

I too prefer to own my data.

Legal questions certainly need to be answered -- and policies modified -- about who controls/owns your cloud-based data, but I think the data in the cloud is going to be bigger and bigger as time goes on.

Assuming your cloud provider doesn't screw up and lose your data (and the hope is that they're doing better backups than you'll do, if you're the "average" users and do almost nothing), the convenience of being able to access your data from anywhere has the tendency to trump many people's objections to not having that data on a single hard drive on a single machine.

Keeping it on a networked server is an alternative, but again, most people don't want to be in the position of building, protecting, maintaining and paying for their own server.

Right now the prices for cloud data are a bit on the high side when you're talking about 10 GB or more, and I don't think the average user is prepared to pay it.

But for critical data, having an additional backup might be worth it.

Steven,

You've completely missed the big issue. Google searches, indexes, and sells "your" data.

If your cloud data isn't on a public Web page, how and why would Google index it?

> You've completely missed the big issue. Google searches, indexes, and sells "your" data.

Your data is also more readily available to law enforcement officials (whether for valid reasons or not) then it is if it's in your own possession. In today's "interesting" political environment, that can be an important detail.

And lo and behold, up pops a Register story making my point for me:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/20/cloud_computing_priv...

Anyone seriously considering cloud computing owes it to themselves (and their companies, if applicable) to read it.

There's certainly a huge potential for abuse, and I wouldn't be surprised to see any of the cloud providers roll over on their customers.

Do you remember that story about HushMail, the super-secure e-mail service that rolled over on one of its users after the government came calling?

Here's a link: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai.htm...

>> "If your cloud data isn't on a public Web page, how and why would Google index it?"

How: In the case of Google Docs, "your cloud data" isn't yours at all. It's Google's.

Why: In a word, "money." Have you ever noticed how the advertisements in GMail quite coincidentally refer to the same subject matter as the majority of your email messages?