Google has been toiling in this so-called cloud computing paradigm for a few years now, hosting its Google Apps collaboration programs for consumers and businesses. While more than two million businesses have signed up for Google Apps, there has been a hesitancy among the bulk of users, especially businesses, to embrace the cloud. That started to change in 2009, and was particularly evident in the prevalent use of Web-based social networks such as Facebook, which has more than 350 million users and Twitter, which has racked up some 60 million users, most of them joining in 2009. “We used to walk into a lot of accounts, and when I spoke to people about cloud computing there was a certain hesitancy and tentativeness about what it meant to surrender their data to the cloud. People had all kinds of concerns, all of them valid. We saw that dissipate over the course of 2009 and it’s partly generational. People that grew up on the Internet have fewer concerns about what it means to entrust a server with their content. It’s no longer a question of whether or not this is happening. It is happening and now we need to solve the hard problems together and I think that’s what we have to look forward to in 2010, rolling up our sleeves and continuing to establish to the trust relationship we have with our users.
— Bradley Horowitz - Google Has Big Plans for Google Voice, Cloud Computing in 2010
Reblogged from privacypete
