Getting Addicted to Gmail? Chances Are Google Will Charge You Once
by
on September 29, 2008,
There’s a very thought-provoking article in the Guardian today about the dangers of cloud computing that resulted in quite an animated discussion in the blogosphere making people forget the tech companies stock valuations for a moment and try to figure out if we are really locking ourselves up in a trap of the much-hyped cloud computing.
True, cloud computing is obviously one of the most hyped terms these days and everyone thinks it is kind of hip and cool to rely on web applications that will take as much of your digital life as possible to the clouds from your own desktop - and keep it in the cloud.
But Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the GNU free operating system, thinks that there is a big danger in cloud computing as we are losing control to the companies offering such solutions instead of keeping it to ourselves. And eventually those companies will decide what to do with us: for one, they could start charging for the applications and the tools we are getting addicted to partly because they are free will be growing more and more expensive to us with time.
The most dangerous scenario we can imagine is that some company could decide to lock us out of our own files (or simply lost them out of reasons it does not even control - no matter which we consider to be worse). But while such a scenario sounds too bad to ever be willfully implemented by any company that wants to stay on the market and maintain a decent brand image, chances are they could still do something harmless like adding a price tag to what we now deem to be completely free. And while it is not particularly dangerous and we will hopefully be able to migrate before we are forced to pay for what we don’t want to pay for (or choose to pay if those are the tools useful enough to justify the price), this scenario sounds like a perfectly possible one to me.
We have grown accustomed to believing that the vast majority of web-based applications we rely heavily on both for our work and entertainment are free and will remain free but we forget one thing - the majority of them are proprietary applications actually owned by some companies and those companies will decide what to do with these applications. Chances are they won’t be interested in knowing your opinion once they decide to start charging you for what you have used for years now for free.
Those users that tend to diversify their handling of information relying on both web-based applications and storage for some things yet keeping a backup copy of information on their own desktops at least for safety reasons, will probably be least hurt by arbitrary behavior of owners of those applications users can’t control. These users will have a backup copy and will be able to migrate somewhere else to a place they can control - most probably a desktop version of the same application. But of course the radical option of keeping everything you can to yourself does not sound particularly realistic either.
So while I’d really prefer not to have to say anything like this, reasoning behind such a criticism of cloud computing sounds like a solid one. Yes, we are all excited about various opportunities web 2.0 provides us with and we eagerly start uploading our photos to Flickr (Yahoo servers) or Picasa (Google servers), our emails are handled by Gmail or Yahoo! Mail with many of us never even bothering to use the POP functionality to pull the emails to a desktop client, our documents (often containing private information) are also uploaded to either Google Docs or Microsoft servers to use Office Live Workspace.
But while these activities seem to be intended to make our work more convenient by giving us access to all our information anywhere we may need it, we somehow don’t think of the consequences when any of the companies (or all of them) decide to change their pricing politics and finally earn a revenue off their web-based application same as traditional software vendors do now. I don’t want to support any conspiracy theories myself but I think it will not hurt to reconsider your current information handling to at least keep some control over what you do and where.
Image by Amir Rowaichi used under Creative Commons.
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Another Croatian
John Jones
Svetlana Gladkova
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
I seriously doubt Google or any other service that is currently free will suddenly start charging for the same level of service. Has any company ever done that and it worked? I believe it’s called bait-and-switch.
Stability? People don’t have the right to complain when it’s free. But as a paid service? That’s a whoooooooole different ballgame, alphaxion. LOL
mona: I still don’t understand why twitter doesn’t try to license its technology to other companies, with additional fees for connecting bespoke twitter implementations to the core twitter network for either pulling tweets in, sending tweets out or bidirectional traffic.
Google is already doing this with Gmail. I’m now over my free storage limit and pay $20 or so a year so I don’t have to keep deleting mails. I’m happy to pay that.
If any service, I think it’ll be Twitter. ie: monthly fee for threaded replies.
Gmail enables “Send mail as:
(Use Gmail to send from your other email addresses)” as well as forwarding - for free.
WOW, really? Richard - did you know there are workarounds with all the options Gmail offers?
@Rahsheen: I doubt that myself also but the possibility is here and if they all do it, we will be left without any options at all. I know it sounds like apocalyps but still.
Mona - when I said *I’m* happy to pay, I meant I’m happy my *work* pays! It’s nice to just not have to deal with workarounds — or am I missing something really easy?
@Richard: That’s reasonable when you need something and pay for it because you see value. I am talking about situations that could be possible when you are forced to pay for what you already use for free now.
@Mona: I am actually a firm believer in paying for a service when you need it - I pay for Flickr, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and some other services that I feel are worth paying. Twitter could be another one as well and I will not hesitate paying for it as well. But what I am referring to here is not paying for what you are ready to pay for but being forced into paying for what you are accustomed to using for free.
google apps has a premium version, svetlana…
mona: thing is tho, with an actual revenue stream such as licensing, they could improve the infrastructure of their own network. And when I said bespoke I’m meaning sitting on a server in the paying companies server room.. that will be rock solid as twitters stability problems stem from the sheer number of active users.
@mjc: I am perfectly aware of the premium version
But the majority of end users seem to be pretty happy with the functionality available in the free version as it is. And it’s very different when you are made to pay for what you get for free - and I’m only talking about a possibility here, not a fact.
I think that’s illegal in our country, Svetlana. It’s called bait and switch…
Mona, it’s actually illegal in Russia as well, it was just a scenario I wanted to describe - hardly possible and simplistic enough to see yet another possible problem.
Sventlana I a little surprised by this post. Cloud computing is by definition subscription software. When Microsoft move their entire suite of software online, and I don’t mean todays offeringa, they will charge for it. As a matter of fact they can’t wait to do it. No more piracy. It will make such services very cheap compared to what we pay for software now. I sure there will be Ad supported models as well. As far as privacy and control of your material,its too late. Did you see Mission Impossible with the computer which Tom Cruise needed to break into to get a list of names. It was offline, in a vault, under massive security. This might seem far fetched , but if you have personal data that you want to keep safe,you might want to save your current computer. Rather than give it away or sell it , you might just find todays computers a valuable asset for offline storage. I think everyone needs to ask themselves if they trust Google with their information. I recently watched a video and its somewhere over on SocialMedian, which is the first interview with Google’s founders. I think you will find it enlightening. It was only a week ago, so let me know and I’ll dig it up. BTW, when the news hit FF today about the market I was just starting to comment on one of your stories, but got caught up in the momment. That was really interesting today. Also, don’t worry about Apple and Congrats on Scoble citing you as one of the best bloggers, I agree with him!
Michael, I agree with you 100% about Microsoft’s intention of charging for the office suite when they finally manage to move it online. And it is very possible that such subscriptions will finally teach us (web users, I mean) pay for more web applications instead of expecting everything to be free and ad-supported. Your idea about ad-supported MS Office apps, kind of difficult to imagine right now but still interesting. But I believe if Microsoft offers anything for free, the functionality will be as basic as possible so hopefully they will make paid apps more usual to us.
As for keeping my information safe with me, I actually already follow your advice to a certain extent - I already have a spare laptop that I did not manage to sell so use it for backup
I am not paranoid, no (just a little maybe) but sometimes I don’t believe in the “do no evil” staff for a reason.
And thanks a lot, I am really glad to have you as a reader now, it is just a pleasure and I am very flattered by you complimenting my work here!
I like how the author makes it seem as though this is specific to cloud computing. This has been going on for years with regular software. Sometimes it is accomplished using formats. For instance, Adobe can make some software to write PSD files… and as more and more people rely on this particular format and write applications and services to rely on this format, it makes it harder for people to switch software. That is, unless competing software is designed to also use this format. At this point, the originators of the format can charge licensing fees. This happened with GIF which is widely used on the web, outside of JPEG.
And then there is lock-in by expectations. Many schools want work turned in electronically in the form of Word Docs. They don’t ask for PDFs… or HTML… or anything that would acceptably display on a PC or a Mac… they ask for it by brand… Microsoft Word. This creates a lock-in by expectations. Even if a competing product would suffice, an unnecessary expectation is created by the previous generation that doesn’t want to change.
Finally, there is lock-in by compatibility. Windows is the perfect example of this. Many people would love an alternative to Windows… but most of the software is written for Windows… to pick an alternative means to cut down on software choices. If everyone switched, there would be more and more choices eventually… but it first takes the initial pains of switching, which most people just aren’t willing to deal with.
Whomever wins with cloud computing is going to be the one who promises to let you extract and move your content. They will offer free choices but will understandably charge money for extra usage. This is the path that Google is forging. If they were to suddenly do an about-face… people would grumble… they’d deal with it for a while… and then a competitor would spring up, read to save everyone from Google.
I don’t really see this happening. This is more of a tactic that Microsoft would employ… and it is Google who is trying to save us from Microsoft.
@StareClips: The author was talking about cloud computing because she was inspired by cloud computing predictions. Yet your arguments on formats used in software are absolutely valid and it is a well-known method of lucking both users and other developers in.
In general I agree with you in the Google part as well - and I will be the first to pay what they charge for a reasonable offer when I have both the tools and backup functionality. But I don’t think Google actually sees its mission as saving us (poor things locked in MS formats), it may be in killing Microsoft partly but out of their own understanding of how applications should function for Google to be profitable.