- Image by Irregular Shed via Flickr
So Google and China are in a political staredown right now because someone (presumably Chinese cyberspies) tried a massive hack on the online accounts of several Chinese dissidents, which included a swath of Gmail accounts. For those of you reminded of the Iranian Cyber Army’s takedown of Twitter, be comforted in knowing that the ostensibly pro-Chinese hackers limited the data incursion to specific people, rather than the whole service.
The end result, however, maybe the same — Google is considering withdrawing from the Chinese market, which may leave all their Chinese user base without their apps and data. Thus, in the end, the pro-government Chinese cyberwarriors may get what they want — the elimination of Google as a tool of political agitators within China.
Beyond the obvious implication that your online data is at best a bargaining chip and at worst collateral damage in cyber-political pissing contests, there’s a more cogent reminder about these “free” services — you’ll only have them so long as it is convenient and useful to the service provider. As Broadstuff reminds us, the only Service Level Agreement you buy for zero dollars is zero SLA. (For those of you wondering what kind of SLA Backupify offers now that it’s free — we offer the same one as when we charged for the service, detailed here.)
Google gives away all its apps as a loss-leader to mine more data from its user base. The moment that maintaining (or even offering) those apps becomes more trouble than it’s worth, Google may retract them. Just ask the Chinese.
Hope those guys had the data backed up somewhere.
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