You can see the trap he's talking about as one possible future on the horizon--I don't think we're there yet, and it will take continuing to be vocal about our

You can see the trap he's talking about as one possible future on the horizon--I don't think we're there yet, and it will take continuing to be vocal about our concerns to keep the benefits from turning sour. The 2 main potential problems with your data being in the cloud versus on your own computer seem to be 1) privacy and 2) portability. Privacy long-term seems to be a tough nut to crack, and seems to depend mostly on choosing companies we feel we can trust. Data portability will only win out against walled gardens when users scream for it loud enough rather than go along using whatever service (such as Facebook) despite your data being locked in. But the benefits we get from using the cloud for storage and computation are going to be difficult to ignore, despite the above concerns, and big brother is going to be constantly creeping in as long as the people continue to be scared into letting him. I can see this being a problem for consumers long-term. But it doesn't do any good to hear that Larry Ellison has come out strongly in favor of keeping your data in-house.