Despite loving Android, I am getting more and more unhappy with Google.

[holvoetn]

This *is* my biggest objection to this drive to the cloud. If your work is cloud based, you are at the mercy of someone else’s whims because you don’t own the tool you are using, you are only borrowing it.

It always has been indicated from the start most of the Google apps were in beta phase (how LONG as Gmail been there ??) and conditions could change sometime in future.
People are always upset when this happens with an application they have been using for free for quite a while and suddenly they are 'forced' to start paying for it or the behavior totally changes because the owner decides to do so.

If you would have paid from the start for a commercial application, there would not have a problem at all, correct ?

If you are depending on the cloud for your work, don't put your work in a free cloud. Make sure to put it somewhere where at least you have knowledge of T&C before you start and are sure those some terms can not change that suddenly. But that means paying for it in some way ... and yes, that could mean setting up your own cloud.

FWIW I still use Gmail (2 accounts) but have never looked into Google+. I don't even use FB (I have an account but that's all).

[r0k]

I could have backed up my entire photo collection to picasaweb for "free" with my google+ membership. Only google would have downsampled all my images to 2048 pixels on the longest edge. That's not a backup. So I paid for smugmug. I also tried so hard to like Yahoo/flickr. The last time I paid for flickr pro was around 2008. In 2011, I decided it was time to pay again because mobile me was going away. I tried so hard to give yahoo my money. They didn't want it. The transaction kept failing for a variety of reasons and it took 16 weeks to get them to take my money. I now have a flickr pro account and will use it sparingly but by the time flickr got their heads out of where the sun don't shine, I had already decided smugmug was for me.

I wrote an article about photo hosting and how Apple in canceling iDisk and MobileMe galleries had "driven me into the arms of blithering idiots." I have to agree with you about the cloud, Hook. It's ok for a backup but my main data will always reside at chez r0k.

BTW, you know what photo editor is the default at smugmug? piknik. I have gimp, seashore, and fx pro studio (all on OS X) and gimp and paint.net on windows. I prefer not to bother with adobe photoshop.

[Hook]

If you would have paid from the start for a commercial application, there would not have a problem at all, correct ?

H, I already made that point in my OP. And, in fact, my wife did pay for PicNik. And this wasn't a beta. It was a successful operation Google bought in 2010. And then just close it down? Why didn't they just license the plugins? They appear to have decided to make G+ more and more of a gateway for Google services.

This isn't about people being grouchy about change. This is about the fundamental unreliability of cloud enterprises at a time when that is the big commercial push.

Sorry if you think I'm just uselessly whining.

[JRakes]

That's the thing about using cloud-based apps and data management: You *WILL* spend your entire life in a perpetual learning and adjustment curve based solely on somebody else's whims. Where your data is, who has access to it, how secure it is, what you can do with it, how it's manipulated "for you," when you can access it, where you can access it, etc etc etc - None of those are under your control. You have put yourself into the role of somebody else's "grunt," led along to do what they think you should do, when, how, and where.

If that works for some, great! Have at it. I'll have nothing to do with it. If M$ went bust today, I might not get any further updates, improvements, or enhancements. But I also wouldn't "lose" anything or have to suddenly relearn everything on the fly. I don't like being yanked around or led down someone else's garden path, so I simply stay out of their garden.

From my perspective, the more the cloud develops, the more convinced I become that I want to avoid it as much as possible.

[jigwashere]

You're right, JRakes. I'm willing to risk venturing out into the cloud for some things, but I do try to be careful so that I don't lose my data. I think you need to be careful, too. As hardware and software technology changes and ages, you don't want to lose the ability to play your old video tapes and 8-track cassettes ( ).

Seriously, it is important to move your data and keep it up-to-date. Will .jpg photos be around forever? As times change, make sure you have the ability to access your own data. Our local historical society warns against this. Printed photos might last 100 years, but digital photos will only last as long as there is hardware and software capable of accessing them.

What if Microsoft did become extinct? You'd be able to access your docs for as long as you have the hardware and software available, but if the rest of the world moves on, you might run into trouble sharing your data. (BTW, I still have a PC running Windows 3.11 and floppy disks. If you need it, let me know.)

Another example: Palm data is hard to access. Palm hardware is starting to fail and it's becoming increasingly difficult to run Palm software on newer computers.

I don't think I'm contradicting you about the cloud, but I am trying to point out that locally managed data has its challenges, too.

[JRakes]

That's true, Jig - Systems and hardware and protocols and such will continue to develop and evolve. That's generally good. But having control of my own data and systems gives me the the ability to migrate in a controlled manner. Yes, I tend to keep up with the developments and move along with them. But in a controlled manner - I'm not suddenly cut off from anything or find something I need / want has simply disappeared. I don't have to unexpectedly struggle with somebody else's "good idea" when functionality or access is suddenly changed "for me." Screw that - I've got better things to do with my life than try to manage my activities around the half-@$$ed whims of others.

[Hook]

I also want to be clear that I understand that change happens and that technological change is rapid. However, so far, on my hard drive, change is much more graceful and less chaotic. Programs strive for a certain expected amount of backwards compatibility, which can sometimes even make the developers' job harder. We expect that because any investment in a program is an investment by the user in time and creativity in a particular method. It won't last forever, and no one has promised me it will. That doesn't mean chaotic change never happens with terrestrial computing, as when Palm chose not to build a software bridge between their PIM apps of over 10 years and their new OS. However, even there, there was a lot of warning that folks needed to find another solution and Palm OS didn't suddenly stop working when WebOS was released.

I don't care if Cloud apps (and we are talking apps here, not services) are free or not (I usually prefer to pay), beta or not. I assume the companies are not doing it to be magnanimous and they *are* getting something out of it. And people make that human investment in their method. In my experience Google and others do little to take that into account. Changes, as they figure out what they want to do, involve something more akin to yanking the rug out.

Okay, they can do that. They can do whatever they want. I'm merely describing the situation and saying I feel less and less like playing and tend to feel more and more negative towards those Cloud enterprises that do it. I end up with a general mistrust of all cloud applications.

Things like DropBox are fine. I think of them more as a service than an app. They give me a handy, self-syncing thumb drive in the cloud. If they took it away tomorrow, I'd be disappointed, but it wouldn't affect what I do the same way having her favorite photo tool that she invested time in learning taken away affects my wife.

[jigwashere]

Well put. I agree.

[weegie]

Sorry if you think I'm just uselessly whining.

As you would probably expect, I certainly don't

That's the thing about using cloud-based apps and data management: You *WILL* spend your entire life in a perpetual learning and adjustment curve based solely on somebody else's whims. Where your data is, who has access to it, how secure it is, what you can do with it, how it's manipulated "for you," when you can access it, where you can access it, etc etc etc - None of those are under your control. You have put yourself into the role of somebody else's "grunt," led along to do what they think you should do, when, how, and where.

If that works for some, great! Have at it. I'll have nothing to do with it. If M$ went bust today, I might not get any further updates, improvements, or enhancements. But I also wouldn't "lose" anything or have to suddenly relearn everything on the fly. I don't like being yanked around or led down someone else's garden path, so I simply stay out of their garden.D

From my perspective, the more the cloud develops, the more convinced I become that I want to avoid it as much as possible.

These are excellent points.

I will never buy PC software downloaded over the internet again, made the mistake once with WinDVD and basically it's money down the drain long term, every time I reformatted my PC's or bought a new one I had to jump through hoops to get another activation key from Corel's absolutely crap customer support, if I had bought a hard copy from a shop I still would have been using it today, as that version is no longer made they would like me to download and pay for a new version.... yeah right, I'm really going to do that when I've already paid for one version that worked perfectly on multiple OS versions.
App stores for windows based PC's, good luck getting your zillions of enterprise customers on that gig MSFT.

I won't get started on Google, except to say that I think my time with Android won't last much longer, it's being changed in ways I don't like and being manipulated around their own income too much while they keep boasting how open it is....BS I say.I closed my 2007 Youtube account a few weeks ago because I'm sick of them changing things around, including terms of use, now there's another bunch of Google propaganda popping up everywhere about changes to their terms when using search or Gmail.

I have to use cloud based systems at work every day and hate it with an absolute passion, it is so incredibly unreliable and slow the lost productivity must be mind boggling if anybody had the clue to actually record it.Personally, I have or see no use for cloud based applications and services, especially when the people pushing these services are doing it under the subterfuge of selling you an operating system [ or should I say "ecosystem" ]or giving it away apparently in Google's case, I still maintain that "the cloud" outside of unimportant file sharing and photo storage and the like is nasty, nasty ideology, Google is the leader in this technology...nuff said.

Local syncing, local storage, local backups, local applications, and physical software discs FTW we have all this wonderful, reliable, fast hardware at our disposal really cheap these days, and all these clowns want us to do everything through networks on their servers so than can play puppetmasters and extort more money