The risks of the cloud

In their study on the economics of the cloud, the Berkeley researchers don’t forget to mention Richard Stallman, who considers cloud computing a trap for the user:

It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign. Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it’s very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true. [1]

Don’t the recent incidents, like the change in Facebook’s terms of service and the recent GMail outage, show that Richard Stallman is right, and that this whole cloud computing thing is stupidity?

Stupid is as stupid does …. [2]

The complaint about Facebook is understandable, but what many people don’t realize is that Facebook’s current terms of use are bad too.

Users don’t read the terms of use of these services. Many accept them because, after all, they aren’t paying for them, it’s free. That’s a trap, because you are paying for these services: you’re paying with your profile, with your actions, by letting them analyze them. Nothing in this world is free.

In the case of GMail, there is still no such thing as a system immune to failure. This isn’t the first time Google has failed. It has happened before, and it will happen again. There’s no need to be alarmed about it.

There should be a service level; what happens is that it isn’t clear to us (I haven’t found it in Google’s terms of service).

It’s good that these things happen, so we realize how much we depend on services in the cloud, but we shouldn’t fall into easy alarmism, or side with that pain in the neck Stallinman.

It’s stupidity if you do stupid things. Find out what the cloud service lets you do; find out what they do with the information you leave on their servers. What are the mechanisms for leaving the service? How do you get your information back?

In short, what is the SLA ? Is there some backup mechanism, or a way to keep the information offline when the service is down?

If your business depends on these free cloud services, and you aren’t clear on this, you’re in serious trouble.

I don’t know whether cloud computing is inevitable. It certainly is avoidable, but that has a cost. There’s a model proposed by Berkeley to work out the point at which using cloud computing makes sense for a company; it’s worth a look.

As for individuals… There I think Macleod has a point: there is a network effect pushing people to use more and more services in the cloud, and there it does become almost inevitable. It’s what is happening with Facebook. People don’t care whether Facebook is used by the CIA, because they value other things, things that outweigh any paranoia.

Either it’s a herd effect or it’s a network effect. Whichever it is, people are using the cloud more, and it’s becoming almost inevitable. In the end, either people themselves will get this regulated for their own benefit, or society will step in. So I wouldn’t worry that much either.

I know there are journalists, sent by their editors, who are out for blood right now, or for the classic piece about how “technology is going to lead us to disaster”, or “the internet is bad, don’t use it”. I don’t know, why do they do that? It’s a shame. I hope they don’t oversimplify the matter. What’s happening is normal; these are just the symptoms of a change.

Whether it’s for the better, I don’t know. I don’t believe in progress. What is clear to me is that we have to evolve, and evolving means adapting to change, and that is what’s happening: there is a change, inevitable in certain respects, but not because of some dirty conspiracy of datacenter salesmen. It’s for other reasons, quite understandable ones, if you analyze them properly.

[1] Richard Stallman

[2] Forrest Gump