

Google's Chrome OS Means Losing Control of Data, Warns Richard Stallman - hornokplease
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/dec/14/chrome-os-richard-stallman-warning

======
blub
This is exactly my problem with cloud computing and web apps: relinquishing
control over your data. And to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, he who gives up
freedom for convenience deserves neither.

~~~
wladimir
Yes, he has a very good point. No matter how stable, redundant and distributed
the cloud backend is technically, the danger is in the human factors.

Especially if you depend on one company (either Google, Amazon, ...). If that
company decides you violated their terms of service in any way, they might
simply remove your account and all your files. There is nothing you can do
against that.

This would make it even worse than 'traditional' vendor lock-in with
proprietary data formats.

Luckily, most cloud service providers allow downloading your files to make
remote backups. But this might not always be the case and is easy to
overlook/forget.

