What is it like to be part of the Web 2.0 generation? It involves updating your status on Facebook a number of times every day, uploading pictures from a recent vacation on Flickr, tweeting about the weather and exchanging hundreds of emails a day. Who really owns all the data that you generate? The answer to that will decide the future of cloud computing.
Currently ownership is a dicey issue. The revenue generation of many of the cloud applications is based on a system of monetisation which involves ‘using’ the user data to show relevant ads.
If users are the true owners of the data that they generate, it must be possible to download all the data from a service when they delete their account. Facebook recently announced that when a user deletes an account, his/her data will be deleted from its servers; but it is not clear what happens to your data in case of other services.
These restrictions are in place to make sure users do not migrate to other services, but have taken a hit with the launch of Google’s >Data Liberation Front The goal is to ‘liberate’ data so that consumers and businesses using Google products always have a choice when it comes to the technology they use.
Explaining the nature of cloud applications today, lead engineer of the Liberation Front Brian Fitzpatrick says: “Imagine you want to move out of your apartment. When you ask your landlord about the terms of your lease, he says that you are free to leave at any time; however, you cannot take all of your things with you — not your photos, your keepsakes, or your clothing.”
DLF wants to make it easy to move data in and out of Google. The site demonstrates the easiest ways to ‘liberate’ data from Google services — Youtube, Gmail and Blogger. Moving data out brings in compatibility issues, which has led to a push towards open formats.
While all your data on Gmail can be extracted through either IMAP or POP, files on Google Documents can be converted to open formats and downloaded as a .zip file.
Though the move might revolutionise the way we look at cloud applications, Benjamin Edelman, assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, says the opening up of Google’s API and data has not happened across the board. “In the most important area, the one business where Google makes billions of dollars of revenue, Google is not actually offering the data portability that DLF promises. A 17-step procedure is required to import a Google AdWords campaign into Microsoft adCenter.”
Real freedom might be a mirage even in the virtual world, but you might just be able to carry around your entire online social profile wherever you go. Soon.
