Delicious and Flickr are feeling the force of Yahoo cost cutting measures, it has been reported over the last 24 hours.
Two of the web’s innovators, purchased by Yahoo now find themselves in a kind of “what next?” position, with staff layoffs and talk of ‘sunsetting’ abound.
Both entities must not be allowed to cease in their existence.
It matters because of the amount of data that users have uploaded to them and because cloud computing is the way forward for data storage.
Not only do they provide a service that is genuinely useful to millions of people, they have also the cloud at their core.
I’d like to see them sold, rather than go independent – they both need financial support to develop – which may see them end up in the deadpool.
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This will be a big setback for cloud computing advocates.
Whilst, the cloud does offer many useful solutions for users, the fact the service can simply be retired is a big stumbling block.
Wolfstar’s Stuart Bruce sums it up nicely:
‘You’re putting yourself too much in the hands of third parties who you’ve got no control over.’
http://stuartbruce.biz/2010/12/you-cant-rely-on-the-cloud-farewell-delicious.html
It’ s a good point, I mean look at the issues there have been with archiving shortened URLs.
It’s one of those where some sort of regulator could step in to protect user’s data (and I don’t think the net should be regulated), but that ultimately its upto the user to remain diligent about who’s looking after their life online.