E-Dribble

Former brains behind the now dead and buried Netscape browser have unveiled a cloud storage solution for those of you that would like to store all of your sensitive, important and valuable information with faceless people around the intardnet that promise not to lose, harm or misuse your data.

It stands to reason that a group of people that did so great in the browser wars would now up the ante by offering to store your data that could potentially ruin your life were it to be, lost,  placed in the wrong hands or compromised.

I don’t have a problem with the fact that Netscape developers are getting into the cloud storage business.  I think for that to happen, I would have to find cloud storage a viable technology.  I find the whole premise of remote storage to be utterly laughable,  so at most, the Netscape angle is just a higher level of laughable.

Cloud storage.  It sounds cool, doesn’t it?  We’ve been embracing the whole web 2.0 thing for a while now, so these types of things just get absorbed into the savvyness of it.  Facebook, Twitter and MySpace for every asshole that wants to tell you about his current emotional crisis by text message?  Sign me up!  AJAX for the most simple of web elements, increasing the page source ten fold for no good reason?  Rock on! Why, we’ve even got Web 2.0 style buttons for your web page, so everyone can more closely integrate their adoption of the fad with each other. Cloud apps, storage and even OS’s are hot too, man.  If you’re against it, you might as well be yelling “Get off my interlawn!” or telling whippersnappers how you did it in web 1.0(or web .9.2, if you’re hard core).

Google began the big push for cloud apps.  They needed a way to keep you under their advertising umbrella for a longer period of time.  They already tell you where you are via Google Maps when you’re lost, where your fat ass is currently sitting when you should actually be exercising via Google Earth and what number you should have actually called via GOOG-411.  What they didn’t develop, they bought.  Google is the behemoth that everyone thought Microsoft was when the people demanded that the government castrate the Redmond giant.  In short, Google wants more.  Of everything.  They can’t get enough.

So they push cloud apps and storage.  Because, you know…. they offer remote stuff.  “Have your company use our remote apps and be able to share and develop from anywhere in the world?  We’ll hold on to everything for you.  Why, you don’t even have to buy applications for your computer.  We’ll provide those as well.”

Who in the fuck thought this was a good idea?  I would ask how they convinced the people that it was a good idea but if you know me, then you know how little I think of you all(If you disagree, you can leave a comment on my Facebook page directing me to your twitter post concerning the topic).  It’s well known that Google will do absolutely anything for statistics and demographics.  They already parse their users’ mail to be able to serve them better targeted advertisements.  Of course we should store all of our sensitive information with them. What could possibly go wrong?

Google is no longer the company that does no evil.  Google is the company that does what it has to do to make money.  It’s too large of an entity to have a sense of ethics.  With the current storage methods, you have the ability to attempt to safeguard your data.  with remote storage, you get an empty promise from a nameless entity too large to have a chain of accountability.

The drinking of the Kool-Aid doesn’t stop there, however.  Storing your data remotely warrants being labeled an idiot.  Storing your applications along with your data?  Well, that’s just idiot taken to a much higher level.  I once had a conversation with a man developing a web based OS. Nobody but I saw the humour in a remotely hosted operating system.

Steve Jobs proved long ago that people would buy anything if you made it sexy enough, price be damned.  It didn’t need to be better, it just needed to make you feel better about yourself. As time progresses, people attempt to become more of an early adopter of anything that is considered sexy. People can be found notifying others about posting to their MySpace pages from their iPhone.  Nevermind the fact that MySpace is a joke and the iPhone is an overpriced steaming pile of shit.  They’re cool and if you’re cool, you’ll follow suit.

Why, back in my day, we had to store our data on floppies.  And we liked it.

We loved it.