With the web, we generally follow the same fast food mentality that things need to be available right now but screw cost, health concerns and the big picture. The Chrome OS would rock if it was backed by reliable and secure applications but the fact that my life is behind a single Google ID is pretty scary and I’d like to simple bring up a few things that has me saying, “slow down!” pretty much every day.
A service like Skype was released in 2003 and enabled you to call anyone anywhere from computers to even land lines with better prices than typical telephone companies allowed. You gave up a few things. The first thing is that you had to own a computer (at the time) and you couldn’t dial 911. Soon, more phones were added (mobile and desktop phones), eBay purchased Skype and they became very competitive about taking a chunk of market share away from traditional telephone companies. It’s 2009 and the site hasn’t exploded but I’d like to mention that it’s been 6 years and you still can’t use Skype for emergency calls.
Box.net was released in 2005 and they currently server over 1 million files a day between users. That means, people are uploading 1 million files a day to a service that, just like any web service, can be hacked. I have no clue what kind of files are being sent but unless they’re being tweeted, I’m fairly certain that these are considered private.
Google who deserves the most criticism here has a suite of tools that they charge for that should help businesses save money and get going faster that were just recently taken out of beta. Beta means not yet ready for primetime but Google had the balls to charge $50 a year per user for Google Apps. Of course the services were full featured but Google decided to keep this tag because it essentially freed them of having to take responsibility for the product or provide support for it. If your data was hacked and sent to TechCrunch, they weren’t responsible even if you were a paying user.
I’ve only picked on three services that may or may not have deserved this but these are not the only three offenders or innovate now, reliability later. Every time Gmail, Yahoo! Messenger or Google Docs is down for maintenance, the entire web freaks out and then if Twitter has downtime at the same time, things really go to Hell. What’s remarkable about this culture of web based technology is that it’s very unreliable yet people embrace it so much. Gmail is down pretty often where Yahoo! Mail is rock solid and I use Google Apps just like most users but it does frustrate me when email isn’t available. Of course, I’m one of the few that hasn’t adopted the web revolution. I’d like to introduce you to a few services that are desktop based, require a hard drive to store and that I even installed using a Compact Disk (gasp!)
1. Apple iWork (Pages+Numbers+Keynote) [OFFICE PRODUCTIVITY] 2. Microsoft Office 2008 [OFFICE PRODUCTIVITY] 3. Apple iLife ’09 [DIGITAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT & CONTENT CREATION] 4. NewsGator’s NetNewsWire [RSS READER] 5. Apple Mail / Microsoft Entourage [DESKTOP BASED EMAIL MANAGEMENT] 6. Tweetie / Yoono / Seesmic Desktop [TWITTER MANAGEMENT] 7. Things [GET THINGS DONE / TASK LIST] 8. OmniFocus [PROJECT MANAGEMENT] 9. iTunes [DIGITAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT / MEDIA STORE] 10. Fetch [FTP MANAGEMENT] 11. Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign [ADOBE DESIGN SOFTWARE] 12. iCal [EVENTS / TO DO MANAGEMENT] 13. Calculator [CALCULATING THINGS]
What’s amazing about this list is that all of these apps can be replaced by web-based applications offered by Yahoo!, Google and a few other small startups. I’ve paid good money for these apps where most of the web services are free and if my hard drive dies, I lose this data and cloud based computing is reliable and available on any computer in the world with an Internet Connection.
The last part of this statement being “Internet Connection.” I work from a cafe’ in San Francisco and it’s amazing to see people closing their laptops when the Internet goes down. The entire place is empty because they can’t access Twitter, Gmail, Google Docs or even play music because all of these services are now web-based. I know people who don’t even have music stored on their phones and rely on Pandora or Last.FM for music and do all of their photo editing on Picnik (via Flickr). The Internet does go down and it goes down often. Sugar Cafe has Internet issues twice a week, my apartment Internet is down once a week and there are even issues at my office where Internet goes down. I’ve also had to find an email while on the bus or schedule an appointment at a cafe with only my laptop, iPhone and no free wi-fi and I could do it with no problem. My Chrome OS netbook would be completely worthless with no Internet connection.
Let’s not forget the impending collapse of humanity (no I’m not going biblical on you) when nothing works. Internet is down, power is out and phones don’t work but there’s contact info of someone that I have to get so I can make it to their safehouse in Montana and that info is stored on Google Contacts. Well I’m just shit out of luck.
Do yourself a favor, to those of you who disagree with me. Unplug your Ethernet cord and turn off wi-fi on your computer and put your iPhone in airplane mode and now try to do everything you need to get done for the day including sending emails (even if they just go into a queue for later sending) and let me know just how long you last.
Everyday before I leave the house, I launch all of my apps, download RSS feeds, email, to-do lists from friends and sync my iPhone and check appointments. Then I can open up my computer any time during the day, read RSS feeds, reply to emails and even get things done all without an Internet connection. It’s not a crazy idea to work with no Internet but we’ve become so dependent on giving a lot up for zero in return other than being able to access the data from any computer and how often do you really do that?
Just so you know, by using Google’s services you’re giving them access and rights to store and analyze that data for years after you’ve closed your account. They can deliver ads to you, track your habits and own your life just because you wanted to save a few bucks on software or have flexibility of accessing information anywhere. That whole portable information thing? Well it was defeated when we started having 2.5 pound laptops available to us. The laptop weighs less than a text book so store some freaking data on it and don’t rely on Google to store everything.
Don’t get me wrong, I store a ton of data online but I’m constantly mindful about what I store and always ensure I’m going to be just fine in the event of a power failure or loss of Internet. I have 45 days of music, 200 movies and every email sent to me in the past 10 years on a computer that goes with me everywhere and is backed up to two seperate hard drives, all of which are secured by very complex passwords. It’s my data and I keep it with me. That’s how I work.
When I can access my “cloud documents” when the Internet goes down or power goes out then I’ll switch but reliability wins over innovation and I guess I’ll be in the dark ages when everyone is running around with Chrome OS. For the record, to those tech bay area geeks that are reading this, My father runs a computer on Windows 98 with IE 6 and uses Yahoo! Mail. You cringe but he’s perfectly happy so before you call Chrome OS the next big thing, just know it’ll be 20 years before everyone is using it including me.
“Calculator [CALCULATING THINGS]” Love it. But really, you've brought up MANY good points and given us a lot to think about. It's frightening how reliant we've become on something we can't control. Very insightful post.