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The Downsides of Google
By Bizbox
We've been such cloud computing and Google triumphalists recently that the interests of fairness behoove us to supply a counter-example. Gizmodo runs the positively Kafka-esque story of a Google customer named Nick--a customer who, unlike most, has actually paid Google (for extra space; at a basic level, Google's online software really does tend to be free)--and who one day found himself (shudder!) locked out of his Google account!!!
"When he emailed Google to find out what in the hell was going on, he got this less-than-promising reply:
'Thank you for your report. We’ve completed our investigation. Because our investigation was inconclusive, we are unable to return your account at this time. At Google we take the privacy and security of our users very seriously. For this reason, we’re unable to reveal any further information about this account.'"
This is like The Shining-scary, we know.
The story did not have a sad ending: Nick haggled and emailed, and eventually got his account back and all his information along with it. Nor do we think that the story's moral is not that cloud computing is a poor idea, nor that Google--whose famed motto is "Don't be evil"--is bad.
But maybe this chilling tale is a sign that important stuff is still, even in 2008, very much worth backing up in some indestructible, physical location (even if it's an external hard drive kept somewhere exceptionally safe). And if something bad happens with your cloud-computied information, well then, to quote from another motto: "Don't panic".
Comments (0)August 6, 2008 5:38 PM
