I recently found out the hard way how dependent I am on Gmail. I have a few accounts that forward to this address, so some of them are backed up somewhere else, but not the mail from Gmail itself. I didn’t have access for about 14 hours, which proved to be a little stressful, so I went online to see if this had happened to others. What I found was a lot of paranoid people.

Do you put your data (documents, email, events, etc.) online somewhere for others to manage? Isn’t it easier to trust someone else with your data, even if there are some glitches in their systems, rather than manage it all yourself?

You see, I am a mobile junkie. I want to be able to reach any of my emails, documents, calendar events, etc. via multiple devices - whether it be my home computer, my work computer, or my mobile device. Therefore, “cloud computing” makes a lot of sense for me.

Some say to never trust your data to others. I, on the other hand, would rather give up the task to someone else, even if there are some inconveniences from time to time. I not going to freak out because Gmail went down for a day. I have had a Gmail account for four years and this has never happened before.

I happen to work for a company that manages others’ data, and to be quite honest, sometimes systems just fail. That’s what backup processes are for. So… I say let somebody else manage your “cloud” of information for you - it’s just less of a headache. If you’re paranoid, then back it up yourself.

Your thoughts?