Where's your data?

Monday, June 16, 2008 by Dave Winer.

Earlier today I asked for advice -- should I use Yahoo or Google Groups or something else to distribute email to NewsJunk readers? In the discussion that followed, a few people suggested that because Yahoo's future was uncertain, Google would be a better bet. This made sense, like everyone else I've been following the news about Yahoo and Microsoft, noting that key people are leaving, the stock price has fallen, pundits say the company's future isn't bright. 

This underscores the need to control our data, we should never think of a company as permanent. If you're new to technology maybe you're learning this for the first time. If you've been around a while, as I have, you've learned this many times. I remember when I thought that CP/M-formatted 8-inch floppies were a perfectly safe way to store data. I figured there would always be a way to read those disks. Only a few years later, that was wrong. Today you'd imagine that you could always view a static HTML file. Seems that way to me too, but I bet someday someone will wonder what you mean by that.  

I guess it's like a Zen Haiku or something -- there really is no here or now, you don't really have any data, but for the time-being it's still a good idea to think before you choose a place to put stuff you care about. Today Google seems safe, Yahoo not so safe. Mark that, let's come back in 10 years and see if it's still that way.