Today, like million of people, I’ve been greeted by a scary Google screen of death while trying to access my Gmail account,

Gmail Down Message

Yeah right, I’ve been told everything is fine.

I know those companies do their best to protect your data — after all, it’s their core business –, but we all know a massive outage could happen anytime for whatever reasons; natural disasters, fire, hackers, you name it.

It already happened to The Planet whose data center has been ravaged by fire, letting thousand of businesses in the black.

Can we really trust the cloud?

After all, the Internet business has changed. Yesterday open and self-replicating networks (e.g., Usenet) are now operated in closed silos by private companies (e.g., Google, Facebook). It’s really not easy to aggregate and download all your data — as a backup — from the cloud; who knows what’s happening behind the walls?

What if we think about a distant future, say 40 years from now. Would I be able to access and search everything I’ve sent to the cloud so far (e.g., pictures, comments, writings, emails, tweets, chats)?

I don’t even know.

I’m using Internet services every single day but I can’t help myself having this weird feeling of working without a safety net.