Om, that's good thinking, I hardly ever like to support the leader as well. So I use Yahoo as my search, I run Ubuntu on my desktop, and use Firefox as my browser. I've been using Google docs and spreadsheets, but it's been making me nervous the longer they've had my data, and I'm considering pulling those files offline and using actual software on my overpowered system to access those files. In the end, giving someone else my data worries me over the long term.

putting your private information in a 'cloud' is ok until some guy with an airplane flies up there to take a peek at it.

still, gmail, et al, is so damn convenient that I keep all my mail there.

government must be tickled pink that so many people want to have the intimate details of their lives traverse a transparent medium like the internet whenever they want to access it.

there's still a lot to be said for the privacy of information in a binder in a locked drawer, vs. floating in a 'cloud' somewhere.

maybe we should change 'cloud' to 'bubble'...

I assume you columnists are in Santa Rosa with a 30MB/s synchronous link? Uploading something large to GDrive for the vast majority is unusably slow.

I disagree with the assertion that Google is becoming a monopoly, just as I think it's obvious that Microsoft never was actually a monopoly (and never will be). Neither has exclusive control of a type of service, both are constantly improving their offerings, and competition is lively.

The idea that the cloud will take over ignores the fact that both computing power and storage are constantly getting better and cheaper, and there are other options for accessing information from any web browser - for example, I run a Windows Home Server at home, and I can access any desktop in my home from IE running anywhere, for free given my one-time purchase of the Home Server.