I wouldn't dream of suggesting that access to data that you knowingly stored some place with questionable data persistence guarantees is as fundamental as acces

I wouldn't dream of suggesting that access to data that you knowingly stored some place with questionable data persistence guarantees is as fundamental as access to water. You may disagree. Personally I would like to see society move in this direction. The data persistence guarantees should not be questionable, they should be legally enforced. I'm pretty sure we could come up with some terms that aren't realistically that onerous to Google (and other providers), but give users some assurances. We're treading new ground with the concept of digital goods that are extremely cheap to manufacture, distribute, and store, and this idea that ubiquitously useful services can be provided to everyone for free by extracting value from the data generated by their usage. In the pre-digital era, the government "ordering Google to supply a service at no charge" would probably be an untenable precedent, but today that could happen with almost negligible impact to their business, because it already operates like that. You and I both probably agree that the cloud is a significantly easier approach to organizing, storing, and using data than traditional approaches. This is exactly why we should recognize it as a public utility and endeavor to reduce the inherent dangers, just like we go to great effort to make clean water available instead of teaching everyone how to test and treat it themselves.