The most common reason cited for the difficulty of moving from local hard drive computing to online cloud computing is security. Developers think people are too afraid of storing their personal data online where it can be hacked and compromised more easily.
I think it’s just a matter of time before people get comfortable with it. I remember when Amazon.com considered online security to be its greatest challenge. They used to have a “Why this is safe” link almost everywhere you went on their site. Now that millions of people have bought from Amazon.com many times and stored their financial details there with no trouble, few think of security as a reason for not shopping at Amazon.com.
Similarly, I moved my office operations to Google Docs and OpenOffice in the past year. I was hesitant at first, but now that we’ve used GDocs for real work from anywhere on the planet and I’ve seen how much easier it makes my business travels, I never think twice about whether my material is safe.
Should I? Let’s test this out in the real world.
I just created and saved at Google Docs a document called “Hack Test” with a code phrase in it. I’ll even give you the repository for my saved files: docs.jasonkelly.com. See if you or somebody you know can get into it and email me the code phrase. If so, we’ll make big news together.
I’m betting, however, that it won’t be done. I’ll give a report later.
