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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff Works dot com. By there,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Paul Atam,
Speaker 1: an editor here at how Stuff Works, and today I
Speaker 1: have sitting next to me Jonathan Strickland, one of our writers, yes,
Speaker 1: one of many, yep, yep. And you know he's always
Speaker 1: someone who likes to look for that silver lining cloud. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this time we're actually looking at the cloud around
Speaker 1: the silver lining. That's kind of funny you would say that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know we uh, we've actually done a whole series
Speaker 1: of articles on cloud computing and two podcasts and um,
Speaker 1: that's because it's it's such a hot topic. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's very popular in the news right now
Speaker 1: and something that I imagine many of our listeners were
Speaker 1: probably familiar with even without having check those out. UM.
Speaker 1: But what we're talking about when we say cloud computing,
Speaker 1: for those of you who don't know, UM, is basically
Speaker 1: in a in a very small nutshell, applications and storage
Speaker 1: that is web based, so you you don't save files
Speaker 1: on your hard drive, you don't access applications on your computer. Um,
Speaker 1: they're all stored online so that you don't have to say,
Speaker 1: carry a briefcase with a computer in it on the
Speaker 1: way you know, to and from work, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a neat idea when you think about it, you
Speaker 1: know it's all going to be there no matter what
Speaker 1: computer you're on. It also means that it makes it
Speaker 1: much easier to share your information with with other people,
Speaker 1: so that if you were to save something to a
Speaker 1: network and allow other people access to that network, then
Speaker 1: you can all work from the same foundation article or
Speaker 1: or document. Um. For anyone who's ever done any collaboration,
Speaker 1: it can It can be really frustrating to work with
Speaker 1: computer files because if everyone has a copy of a
Speaker 1: computer file and everyone's making changes to that to their copy,
Speaker 1: getting all those copies back together and and and trying
Speaker 1: to make them coalescent to a new document is very difficult.
Speaker 1: So cloud computing gives you the opportunity to have multiple
Speaker 1: people working on the same file at the same time
Speaker 1: and uh and and avoid all those those superfluous copies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, you can. It's gotten so sophisticated that you
Speaker 1: can actually merge the documents together even if you are
Speaker 1: working on at the same time, um, which is which
Speaker 1: is a far cry from the way things used to be. Exactly,
Speaker 1: But there is a dark side to cloud computing insert
Speaker 1: thunder noise here. Yeah, um right, Because you're talking about
Speaker 1: sharing files with other people, you know, there is the
Speaker 1: possibility that you might share them with people that you
Speaker 1: don't intend to share them with. Exactly. Yes, So if
Speaker 1: you have all of these important files stored on someone
Speaker 1: else's hardware, there's there's a lot of concern about who
Speaker 1: else might have access to that, whether it's someone who
Speaker 1: has is a motive to access that in a criminal way,
Speaker 1: or if it's just someone who works for the system
Speaker 1: that's storing the information. I mean, it could just be
Speaker 1: as simple as well. Let's let's let's use some examples.
Speaker 1: A very popular cloud computing platform right now, um is
Speaker 1: Amazon Simple Storage Service or S three. So if you're
Speaker 1: storing huge amounts of data on Amazon's servers, you probably
Speaker 1: want to know who has access to that information, like
Speaker 1: what administrators have access to it, and what what links
Speaker 1: did Amazon go to to make sure that those people
Speaker 1: are trustworthy and they're not going to you know, mind
Speaker 1: that information to find stuff that they could sell to
Speaker 1: other competitors or I mean, there's a whole host of
Speaker 1: issues that you have to come to grips with when
Speaker 1: you're talking about cloud computing. Yeah, that's true. And you know,
Speaker 1: of course we're not accusing anybody here that it would.
Speaker 1: It's just a concept, um that you know, something might
Speaker 1: go wrong. I mean, you think about we we talked
Speaker 1: about Google, who hosts a lot of different cloud computing applications,
Speaker 1: including Google Docs, Gmail. Um. One of the things we
Speaker 1: talked about that's really good about about that is that
Speaker 1: Google makes backups, tons of backups of all the data,
Speaker 1: so you shouldn't miss anything. But then again, if your
Speaker 1: document is on say I'm picking a number from the cloud,
Speaker 1: sixteen different computers with different backups, what happens if somebody,
Speaker 1: you know, runs off with one of those machines, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody You're not necessarily somebody from Google. Somebody just gets
Speaker 1: hold of it, right, just gets hold of the physical
Speaker 1: machine and not even the file. Yeah, I mean, there,
Speaker 1: that's that's an issue. Not granted, these are issues that
Speaker 1: you have to worry about, even if you're storing information
Speaker 1: on your own computer. You have to worry about the
Speaker 1: physical security of your own machines. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: more apprehension when it's not under your direct control role.
Speaker 1: It's it's a trust issue. Do you trust the person
Speaker 1: who's providing that service to you, but that company that's
Speaker 1: providing that service to you enough to to say, you
Speaker 1: know what, they're going to go to all the necessary
Speaker 1: links to protect my information. UM. Now, in most cases,
Speaker 1: the answer to that is usually gonna be yes, because
Speaker 1: if the company is not doing that, they're not going
Speaker 1: to be in business very long. All it takes is
Speaker 1: um uh, one screw up and and you're gonna see
Speaker 1: all the clients just jump ship and they're either going
Speaker 1: to go back to the traditional let's store everything on
Speaker 1: our own machines model, or they'll go to a competitor.
Speaker 1: So it's in the company's best interest to make sure
Speaker 1: that security both physical and online are top notch. Absolutely um.
Speaker 1: And there are other issues to uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: could possibly have service outages. Oh yeah, we've had a
Speaker 1: couple of those this summer. Actually. Yeah. In August eleven,
Speaker 1: Google had a Gmail outage that affected a lot of
Speaker 1: people basically North America and India. UM and it was
Speaker 1: out for about two hours, I guess. Yeah. There's some
Speaker 1: people reported having difficulty accessing Gmail for up to a day,
Speaker 1: and there were other issues as well. Some people were
Speaker 1: having problems accessing any Google apps at all. Um. I
Speaker 1: have used Google Docs in the past for non work stuff, UM,
Speaker 1: my own personal files, and there was I thought, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna do some work on this
Speaker 1: script I'm writing, um and uh, so I tried to
Speaker 1: access it, couldn't get to my Google Docs account at all.
Speaker 1: It just wasn't gonna let me access it, and I
Speaker 1: began to freak out a little bit. Now, my data
Speaker 1: ended up being perfectly safe. There was you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know if they had any crashes on their servers
Speaker 1: or anything, but but it was completely intact um and
Speaker 1: once I was able to access it again and uh
Speaker 1: and really it wasn't an emergency issue for me, So
Speaker 1: I really didn't have any reason to truly freak out.
Speaker 1: But for people who are using goaldocs for uh mission
Speaker 1: critical type applications, I'm sure that was a huge problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the going back to college and the computer lab
Speaker 1: with everybody working on their term papers the night before
Speaker 1: they're due, and the power goes out in the computer
Speaker 1: lab and I have have you ever been in that
Speaker 1: situation I had in the lab when it happened, I
Speaker 1: actually finished before the and I and I used to
Speaker 1: work in a company where where you, uh, we had
Speaker 1: some power issues because the power company was putting in
Speaker 1: new lines to the to the neighborhood that the company
Speaker 1: was in. And yeah, to hear the groans and moans
Speaker 1: and shrieks of people as the power flickered off for
Speaker 1: the fifth time that day, and then to hear someone
Speaker 1: pipe up, and often it was yours truly saying I
Speaker 1: hope you just saved uh your data. Um, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was that was a common occurrence. And that can happen
Speaker 1: on the web. I mean, that's that's what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. That stuff can happen on on cloud computing.
Speaker 1: Even if it doesn't hit the servers they're storing the information,
Speaker 1: it might hit the traffic servers that are directing all
Speaker 1: the traffic to and from those the storage devices. So
Speaker 1: but there are other issues to worry about. Two Um
Speaker 1: I was gonna mention. Another one is the location of
Speaker 1: the servers where the servers are stored. Um. Not every
Speaker 1: country has the same laws and regulations about data security
Speaker 1: that the United States has so and because the cloud
Speaker 1: isn't geographically oriented, I mean you could you could have
Speaker 1: a cloud cloud network with servers that are in the
Speaker 1: United States and servers in Venezuela and servers in Nantarcticle
Speaker 1: if you really wanted to. Uh cool, be quite cool. Actually,
Speaker 1: I bet they wouldn't have any problems with overheating. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the important thing here is that the laws and regulations
Speaker 1: might be different in the country that that actually houses
Speaker 1: the physical machines your data lives on. That might be
Speaker 1: something worth looking into. I mean, it could really compromise
Speaker 1: the security of your data. That's true. That's true. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's another issue, which is sort of a
Speaker 1: less pleasant issue in a way to to talk about,
Speaker 1: and that's the end user license agreement. Oh, I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you mentioned that. I totally forgot to write that
Speaker 1: down in my notes. Well, um, it's this came to
Speaker 1: light and uh, Google is going to send us a
Speaker 1: nasty letter for picking on him today. But um, they
Speaker 1: just released a new web browser right about the time
Speaker 1: we record this, a few days before we recorded this,
Speaker 1: um called Google Chrome, and that that's not really what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here, But what it brought to light
Speaker 1: was it pointed out again that Google and its end
Speaker 1: User License Agreement or ULA for several of its products,
Speaker 1: including Google Docs UM has information that is a little
Speaker 1: interesting to UH to consider that they might actually own
Speaker 1: the rights here information right. Well, they we should also
Speaker 1: jump to mention and that they have addressed this, that
Speaker 1: that's true, they have revised the ULA. But what what
Speaker 1: Chris is talking about here is that there was a
Speaker 1: clause in the ULA that essentially said anything that transmitted
Speaker 1: across through using Google Chrome was Google had rights to
Speaker 1: redistribute in just about any way they wanted to. And
Speaker 1: the lawyers for Google UH explained that what they meant
Speaker 1: by that was they had the right to display that,
Speaker 1: to take your information from you, and if you were
Speaker 1: collaborating with someone else, to display it on their computer
Speaker 1: screen and let them make changes to it. So you
Speaker 1: own the rights to this. And as one of their
Speaker 1: representatives said, and I'm paraphrasing, basically, if you you know,
Speaker 1: if you have your fantasy football stats on, nobody wants
Speaker 1: to see that but you that's your information. We don't
Speaker 1: you know, we don't own that. We don't own the content,
Speaker 1: but we we reserve the right to be able to
Speaker 1: display that if you want it displayed exactly that that
Speaker 1: is part of the Google docs la. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's and it just happened that they poured it over
Speaker 1: to Google Chrome and then it's got a lot of
Speaker 1: attention people read and then they interpret it to mean
Speaker 1: that that anything I do on Google Chrome is going
Speaker 1: to be Google's property forever and ever. Like I guess
Speaker 1: it is a lot easier to index the world's information
Speaker 1: if you own it all, well, that would be that
Speaker 1: would make it a lot easier, yes, but that that's
Speaker 1: you know, Google has has owned up to that. They've said,
Speaker 1: you know, this is not what we meant. Let's clarify this,
Speaker 1: and they they're taking the initiative to you know, go
Speaker 1: ahead and restructure that for for their customers, which is
Speaker 1: which is a good thing. But you should you know,
Speaker 1: anytime you sign up for a service, and there are
Speaker 1: lots of new services every day, believe me, because we
Speaker 1: do a lot of checking into these and I sign
Speaker 1: up for a lot of them just to see what
Speaker 1: they're like. But you know, each one of them, when
Speaker 1: you sign up, they give you the terms and conditions
Speaker 1: of the service. And you know, it's a long legal document.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't read. Do they just click
Speaker 1: I agree and sign up. So are you signing away
Speaker 1: the rights to your spreadsheets or your uh you know,
Speaker 1: screen a or whatever else your power point presentations? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know by doing that? Yeah, you know you have
Speaker 1: to check these things out otherwise, you know, all this
Speaker 1: information that you store away might end up on somebody
Speaker 1: else's computer. Yeah. That that kind of goes back to
Speaker 1: to the first point we were making about, you know,
Speaker 1: make sure you know who has access to your information. Um.
Speaker 1: So these are all important issues. They're not they're not trivial. Uh.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, do keep in mind that,
Speaker 1: like we said before, it is in the company's best
Speaker 1: interests to to make sure that your data remains safe
Speaker 1: and secure. Otherwise they don't have a business model. So
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll be able to say that this dark side
Speaker 1: is more something that everyone's already thinking about and and
Speaker 1: trying to address, and not a fundamental flaw in in
Speaker 1: that in that model, because you know, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't think I don't think anything's going to stop the
Speaker 1: incable progress of cloud computing. It's got a lot of it.
Speaker 1: It does have a lot of advantages over over storing
Speaker 1: information on your own computer because honestly, a lot of
Speaker 1: these places offer gigabytes and gigabytes of storage and it's
Speaker 1: only going up. I mean, as as storage capacity increases
Speaker 1: in the cost of it decreases, you're going to see
Speaker 1: cloud computing services offering to give you, you know, tons
Speaker 1: more space than you could ever have on your own
Speaker 1: personal hard drive, which you could use for you know,
Speaker 1: games and stuff like that if you don't want to
Speaker 1: store a lease documents. So um, you know. I don't
Speaker 1: think that there's any reason to uh to give up
Speaker 1: on cloud computing based on these things, but there are
Speaker 1: things to consider when you do sign up for a
Speaker 1: service exactly. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
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Speaker 1: what you think. Send an email to podcast at how
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