James Drogan

This morning, via Techmeme, comes a pointer to John Battelle's Searchblog wherein he muses "I've found myself more and more wary of doing things that I'd like to do with Google applications simply out of some primal, lizard brain fear of giving too much control of my data to one source."

A provocative statement and there a number of very good comments on the position Battelle has staked out.

I'm reminded here of the following quote from Jim Kelly, former CEO of UPS.

“I believe that we’re about to witness what may turn out to be the last competitive frontier business will see.  It’s going to be a war over the one priceless resource.  Time.  And when it comes, trust may turn out to be the best investment anyone’s made.”

This is not a technical issue, but a cultural, philosophical issue for which there may be not correct answer except for the answer you feel comfortable with.  This is reflected in the comments to Battelle's post.

I tend towards the conservative and risk-averse stance (as I sneak up on Medicare eligibility).  I keep a minimal amount of data (I think this to be true, but do I really know?) out on the 'net.  I don't store passwords on my desktop.  I backup my user data every three weeks.   Is this prudent or do I also have the "primal, lizard brain fear?"

Battelle's post is also be to be contrast with my post on Forgetting.

Finally, could this fear be a damper in the development of on-demand services?