> On a more serious note, I really don't see why everyone is getting so excited about their devices becoming dumb terminals and giving away their power to corpo

> On a more serious note, I really don't see why everyone is getting so excited about their devices becoming dumb terminals and giving away their power to corporations that own the cloud. Because it is enormously more efficient from a societal point of view. The important thing is to have choice, many providers, many platforms, and prevent lock-in. > Furthermore, they are competing unfairly: they use their ads profits to dump products on the market at very low prices or for free, killing the (possible) competition. For now this has been good for the consumer, with two observations: you're not getting something for free, you're paying with your privacy; once google gets big enough it may get to be the only player in some markets and that always ends badly. Rather than resist the coming of the cloud, instead support competitors to adsense/words. I can't be the only one who thinks that a free OS, free Docs, free [insert here] in return for letting Google know what kind of products I like is not just a good trade, for a fabulously excellent one. I only worry that if Google might stop innovating if they get too big, which is why it's essential that Bing is around, and Yahoo, and DDG, and so on, and competitors like iAds that can make a dent in their ad business.