Irreal often posts about the absolute necessity to keep your data under your control. If you commit it to some “Internet service,” sooner or later it will become unavailable. The Stay Sassy blog has a very interesting post on why that is. The post considers unlimited storage and why it’s a Ponzi scheme.
The idea is simple. It costs money to provide that storage and the costs go on forever. Just as with the traditional Ponzi scheme, everything works just fine as long as the service offering the unlimited storage is growing. Stay Sassy says that’s because the services generally make their money when a new user adds their data. As an account ages, there is less new data from that user and therefore less income. As long as there are new users, everything is fine because they pay for the previous users’ storage.
But in the way of Ponzi schemes everywhere, the service eventually runs out of people wanting their service and everything comes tumbling down. At that point, they have to end the “free unlimited storage.”
Stay Sassy says that these services should offer to let users pay for additional storage as a way of keeping things going and, of course, being honest with their users. I know that I always prefer to pay for a service if I can for exactly these reasons. Free services are great but if you want them to stick around you better be willing to pay for them.