Arjan posted a link to my “Making the switch to online apps” post on his link blog today.
Ok, first let me say that I’m always flattered to be included in someone’s link blog and I’m pretty sure I’ve been in Arjan’s a few times. 
Second, I also realize that many people have been using online apps for a long time and what I wrote is nothing new. It seems to me that Scott Hanselman made the move to Google apps last year and did a great job writing about it.
Anyway, Arjan made the following comment under the link to my post:
“Online can be handy, but do you trust Google to make backups for you?”
To be perfectly honest, I suck at doing backups which means that for the most part, I don’t do them. Yes, I know…backups are important, and I do take some very basic steps such as copying important files to another computer in the house, but I really don’t take anything offsite.
As Scott said in his post:
So, in the whole scheme of things, I’d rather have my data in Google’s datacenter and believe they’re doing the right thing than potentially losing everything when a hard drive in my laptop crashes.
Either way, I run the risk of losing data, but it seems less likely with Google.
Good point… The Cloud will be around looooong after I’m gone – so hopefully my data will to.
You know what’s funny? While cleaning up my basement after our recent water problems, I found a whole box full of backups….on ZIP drive media.
shyea…right. Worthless now.
I should be clear…those backups on ZIP drive media were really old…probably 7-8 years, if not older.
Well, you’re probably right that Google is doing the right job, cause data is the core in their business model. On the other hand, I’m still hesitant however to just trust every online entity to take care of my personal data. And then I even mean internet providers. From experience I can tell you that just weeks ago a (Dutch) provider for a non-profit website I’m volunteering in, accidentally removed our complete account. After complaining from our part, the website was restored quickly. However, it turned out that only part of the (couple dozen) email addresses could be brought back to life, leaving me with the mess of sending a lot of people a new password and inquiring if I set up everything correctly (and those emails were created a long time ago). Your post probably stroke a chord because of this little accident…
But, whatever is said about Google, your choice might even be a smart one
@Arjan – I would definitely have a much bigger issue if the company wasn’t as large as Google (or Microsoft). I have looked at some other solutions and have been scared off simple because I don’t know enough about the company to know if they’ll be around in 6 months (or even 6 weeks).
It’s definitely a big decision and should never be taken lightly.
Sorry to hear about your data loss. I’ve experienced local data loss and that’s what’s been driving my push to online apps.
Hey Mike — one more reason for you to get a Mac for your next window’s machine.
You know i’ll never stop trying to convince you.
@Nayan – That app looks cool, but it’ll take more than that to convince me.