Reader rabid: Gmail failures, Amazon blunders, and government spying

I write, you respond. Ain't the InterWebs grand? The residents of Cringeville chime in about Gmail failures, Amazon's Orwellian nightmare, and the evil governments can achieve with the help of technology

It's time once again to recap the best of what's been pouring into my mailbox (now that my e-mail is working again). Here's what the residents of Cringeville had to say about what I've been saying lately.

In a recent post ("Gmail Gfails, Internet survives again") I asked whether Google's total Gmail meltdown last week made people less confident about cloud computing. By and large, my readers say no. Like D. J., who says:

It didn't shake my confidence one bit. When it came back, all my emails were there and secure. For me, it was a good time to get more work done with less emails to worry about :)

[ Also on InfoWorld: "Gmail Gfails, Internet survives again" and "Amazon makes amends for Kindle blunder -- to a point" | Stay up to date on Robert X. Cringely's musings and observations with InfoWorld's Notes from the Underground newsletter. ]

Cringster E. M., who until recently was employed by a company that provided internal tech support for Google, argues that cloud computing is still far more reliable than personal computing. To wit:

Think of the main server going down as equivalent to your personal computer going down. When the server goes down it affects thousands of people and is back up in a couple hours. Your personal computer going down only affects you, but chances are it's not going to be fixed in a couple hours. You'll be lucky if you can get it fixed by the end of work tomorrow. Since everyone's computer goes wonky at some point you could argue that a single server going down affecting thousands for 2 hours two or three times a year is better than thousands of computers going down for an optimistic average of 24 hours spread over a year.

On the other hand, there's a contrarian in every bunch. J. C. had this to say:

I never have and never will have confidence in "cloud computing." Anything that depends on a centralized server, as opposed to a local machine, is inherently unreliable in my book. I'll use Google for email, since I like their service the best of the ones I've tried, but I won't use any other Web-based apps.

Meanwhile, someone calling himself "pyrite" objects to my subject line: