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What i think is scary is the idea subscribers / users might actually rely on such a service 100%. Or is it more scary to tell your customers, from whom you've not yet worked out how to ask for money, which presumably is essential, that maybe before they send in their most valued pictures that they should run a rigourour local backup regimen? Like they'd enjoy that! Even more scary yet is the potential for this to be a bait and switch. First you upload your treasured family stuff, then the company, for whatever reason, runs out of money to "develop their business model" or changes control or management, and then they send you a bill to "upgrade" your service to keep your records intact, same time as sentient customers realise by that time there's not been enough reinvestment to actually place any kind of measurable guarantee as to the integrity of your data. "Please send me the things you most care for, all your precious family stuff. Don't worry, i'll work out a way of making money out of you later!" That's what i hear. Meanwhile, optical "rusts", drive controllers fail, popular FSs do nothing to prevent corruption even on simple copy functions (NTFS, looking at you, but you're not alone) and consumer spec HDDs are doing duty cycles more like enterprise array components did a short while back, as machines get used increasingly 24/7 by family members, for streaming vids, for all the stuff many individuals rely on to keep their present social life intact, let alone their legacy family life preserved. I'm not wholly against TechCrunch, it is useful to have all the startup hopefuls in one place for reference. But with the readership they have, and not even one cursory mention of the pitfalls which are well known to anyone professionally touched by the storage industry, is a travesty. Their advertising revenue is no - doubt robust as a consequence. I keep reminding myself, that despite Google's history as a bait and switch (from "no advertising" to biggest ad agency in their economy) the most significant thing they've done is make the general public aware of the value in archive, in scanned works, out of copyright works, and even - allowing this is hugely contentious - in the value of capturing storing and promoting "abandoned" works, the value of which no-one likely knows. I've strong reservations as to Google's approach. But if you read William Patry, their counsel for copyright, you couldn't find a more lucid general, philosophical approach to why what they do is not against the spirit of copyright law. (which views i believe he held before he joined Google) . Oops, touching on a huge subject, but my private view is that because Google can do this, whether they effectively monetise it or not, they are alerting a vast cross-section of the population to the idea there's value in old works, scanning, digital preservation. Having run a "ancient work" preservation project more than a decade ago, which flunked as budget was really beyond a small outfit who had to turn income more directly, and the quality ambition was high even by current expectations, the thing which bugged me was the number of people who suggested the effort was futile, of no particular value. Now, of course, i get told how such projects are futile because Google will just do them, but there's more art to preservation than they are generally doing - they showed the mass route and network effects can be done. Some of the stuff i was involved in capturing simply isn't even in national libraries. Not bitter or anything, in fact just jealous i'd not been born a decade or two later to enjoy all of this when i was in education, thinking i'd not have dropped out had i been able to do so much research so readily i'd have quickly understood my interests the better :) |