When Google Owns You…

Subtitle: Dangers of the Cloud

A current trend in IT is toward the Cloud, meaning apps and data hosted…out there….on the Internet. There are some HUGE benefits to doing so, especially in the areas of access and redundancy. The downside, however, is sometimes REALLY, REALLY bad.

For this very reason, we should all be a little distrusting of the Cloud, especially in the infancy of some of the technology. As an additional or auxiliary service, sure…but to entrust your business, your data, your livelihood to it is foolishness.

Sidenote: I use Gmail for both my home email and a company email host, but do it though IMAP using either Outlook or Evolution. Always have a local copy! I do not, however, use Google Adsense any longer–I had in 2006/2007, but during a spike in activity when we were in the hospital with my 3-week old son (and I was blogging about it), they arbitrarily decided I had “invalid” clicks. And like so many others you can Google about (ironically), there was no recourse, they would not provide proof or even info, and they kept the funds I had accumulated. The thing is–it would be exceedingly easy for them to allow users to set permissions on visitor tracking, whether denying by IP, by computer, or even set limits to the max number of clicks per day from an IP. But no, they’d rather keep our money without having to prove anything.

Subtitle: Dangers of the Cloud A current trend in IT is toward the Cloud, meaning apps and data hosted…out there….on the Internet. There are some HUGE benefits to doing so, especially in the areas of access and redundancy. The downside, however, is sometimes REALLY, REALLY bad. For this very reason, we should all be a…