I use gmail for all of my business communications and project planning. I depend on it. As an entrepreneur I also must take personal responsibility for my own business systems. I use Google so I make certain that I create backups of all of my critical content that lives in the cloud. This is just common sense.
The argument concerning scalability does not apply to me as I am a very small business, but I think the writing is on the wall. More and more of our content is going to be living on the web and we just need to adapt our computing practices to match. Backing up, thinking ahead and planning for failures seem to be things that humans consistently fail to do.
As people start taking Google Cloud apps more seriously I have no doubt that Google will throw more resources at creating ever more redundant systems. Outages have to be put in perspective. Five 9's is a great goal (99.999%) but I suspect the truth is that those numbers are highly relative. I am sure they are attainable but it takes time and resources. A more or less free offering can hardly be held to the same standard as a for pay system.
Modern people are too often caught in the moment and it seems that taking precautions against losing work or losing connectivity are rarely part of doing our daily work. Foresight people! Install Gears, sync offline, save local archive copies. Do your part in protecting yourself and then you can complain with a clearer conscience.
The cloud is not scary if you spend a a few hours sorting out an emergency plan. More on my own plan in the future. The cloud privacy issue is for another post...
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