[shadowgovt]

Convenience and reliability. This is the first major data loss story I've heard related to drive in, what, a decade? 5 years?

On average, I lose two or three local media devices every decade. I will happily outsource that problem to somebody with full-time concerns of backup and restoration. Especially at the price point of free.

[chupamos]

Sharing personal and business documents with a third party provides no real "convenience" despite any initial perception. If you haven't yet comprehended this, rest assured that you will soon. It's essential to recognize that convenience and privacy typically stand in opposite realms, offering divergent outcomes.

[shadowgovt]

I have a relative with complicated medical needs whom I provide a lot of medical liaison labor for. Along with the rest of the family.

The ability to consolidate his medical history into a Google Doc and have it synchronized across devices, history-stamped, and accessible by the family members who are helping him is life-changing. It has kept him in his own home for years longer than of we lacked these technologies because it allows us to seamlessly coordinate his care among visits and specialists better than the local hospital network does.

When people say "provides no real convenience," I have to conclude they don't have the challenges we face.

This tech has quietly changed the world for the better.

> convenience and privacy typically stand in opposite realms

And thank God the trade-off can be made. We damaged the efficacy of medical care in the name of privacy in this country; were can use Google Docs to counterweight that in our family. If Google gets to know intimate details of my relative's cascading dementia as a consequence, fine.

[saaaaaam]

The real convenience is to be able to collaborate on a document in real time with pretty much any of my clients anywhere in the world. If you can tell me how I can do this reliably myself for less than $100 a month using a frictionless browser based interface that is acceptable to my corporate clients I’m all ears.

[gala8y]

> This is the first major data loss story I've heard related to drive in, what, a decade? 5 years?

Not bad, but still... no copy, no data.

[RachelF]

True, but it's always good to have a backup of Google Drive through something like Syncdocs or Duplicati.

[gala8y]

Yes, you just can't have data in one copy if you care about it. It's a cliche at this point: There are two kinds of people... those who do backups and those who will. I upgraded involuntarily long time ago.

[shadowgovt]

In a world where almost no individual has good backup discipline, cloud storage has helped them stave off the data reaper much longer than they would have alone.

Two or more copies is still the inescapable rule, but having a cloud store is preferable to no cloud store.