Your data is the cloud's best bartering tool

TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid asks, "Since when did my data become a bartering tool?"

Answer? Ever since we started ceding control of our code and our data to the cloud.

One response is easy: demand that the underlying source code behind Web services be open source. No, 99.999 percent of the population won't be able to do anything with it. But .001 percent will, and that's the percentage required to ensure that your data remains your data. The interim response is, of course, competition simply based on data retention policies.

Kincaid's complaint stems from Web mail providers purging user e-mail in order to free up storage and drive the upselling of premium Web mail products. Surely, if Yahoo is wreaking havoc with a user's email, another provider can offer a better retention policy to stick a finger in Yahoo's eye.

But this competition gets teeth with open source, which is why the Web mail providers won't go down that road--and why we need them to do so.

[jrepenning]

Your data became a bartering tool when you yourself decided to barter it for your eye-share. You entered into a contract at that time, to allow Yahoo! or GMail or whoever to spray ads at you; in return, the give you storage and access. If you reneg on your part of the contract, they're fully entitled to deny service.

Why you ever wanted to relinquish your data for such a deal in the first place is the part I can never fathom.

[Jack K1]

I can give you an example:

My university's president wanted its IT department to implement a calendaring/scheduling application: cost - greater than $100,000 for the software and infrastructure. Software & infrastructure in the cloud - free, plus we could have started training faculty on the system immediately. Fast and free made a lot of sense in this case. We're only talking about PIM and some very primitive collaboration tools.

Of course, this was a state school, and they REALLY wanted to spend the money, acquire hardware, and hire staff. Seriously. They spent tons of dough and after a few years - gave up on the idea.

Lesson: theater arts professors just aren't academically prepared for management. Oh, and cloud computing ain't all bad. Faculty who needed calendaring & scheduling systems adopted Yahoo as their tool while waiting for the expensive never-to-be-implemented in-house system.

[fredtheviking]

I think of email as a mail box (only better). This is a mail box that has an address that never needs to change due to a move on my part. Also, even on vaction I can access this mailbox to keep in touch with friends and family. All I need is a computer. Now if a provider needs to purge my mailbox,because I am no longer making use of this wonder service (which I don't have to pay for). So be it.

I think problem is most people don't remember what it was like to not have email. If you wanted to correspond with someone, you had write a letter and mail it with postage. Granted you didn't have to look at ads when you wrote the letter, but it still cost you postage. Plus it took a week or more the person to write you back.

Today, you write someone and they can get back to you within an hour with email. It is one of the great innovations of Internet. And the author is critical about what webmail provider will do to your email service if you rarely use it? I say if you don't use it, you deserve to lose it.

[gggg sssss]

never need to move - until teh provider gives up - like teh web storage peopel, the photo people etc etc. Free is free, but that is al it is worth.

[Ed_Dodds]

Matt: This was the fundamental truth behind the Cooperative Open-source Medical Banking Architecture & Technology initiative of the Medical Banking Project http://www.mbproject.org / http://www.mbproject.org/combat-homepage.php

Ed Dodds
http://twitter.com/ed_dodds

[MSSlayer]

If you are stupid enough to use the term cloud, you are stupid enough to cede control of your data.

Anything bad that happens is earned.

[odubtaig]

Cisco need to cede control of their data eh?

[jamesurquhart]

Why is putting your data on an external platform necessarily "ceding control" of your data? What makes you lose control are the terms of service you choose to accept, not the general concept of cloud. There are plenty of cloud services out there where you maintain total control of your data, though you may have to have legal and technical backstops should you need to leave that cloud. That would be true of an outsourcing agreement as well, however. Or a colo agreement, for that matter.

Choosing "cloud" is NOT a recipe for disaster. Allowing *any* vendor to own *any* unnecessary rights over your data, however, increases your risk immensely. Solution? Don't choose cloud vendors that claim rights over your data. Or pressure the ones you have to change their policies--if you can.

"Trust" will be the biggest issue in cloud computing for 2009: http://news.cnet.com/8301-19413_3-10133487-240.html