Potential Cost of Online Apps

I know lots of people are enthralled with online applications and services, particularly when they are free. The attraction is clear: you get leading technology, don't have to do much to make it work on your end, and you save money. But there are some downsides, and you can read about a big one in a blog by Chris Brogan. When you depend on online services, you can become stuck with little recourse.

He tells of a colleague whose account was abruptly cancelled by Google:

Suddenly, Nick can’t access his Gmail account, can’t open Google Talk (our office IM app), can’t open Picasa where his family pictures are, can’t use his Google Docs, and oh by the way, he paid for additional storage. So, this is a paying customer with no access to the Google empire.

The colleague eventually was able to get his account returned, but it took "a lot of work." What if you were on deadline? What if you expected an important email from a client? The more you allow others to control your business systems, the more they control your business. This is the reason that I use desktop apps, keep extra physical storage on hand for backups, maintain an old-fashioned wire phone line. When things go wrong, I usually ahve a way to work around the problem, so I lose neither sleep nor business.