Ever heard of cloud computing and wondered what is all about?

Cloud computing, in a short and easy-to-understanding definition, is putting (your) information on the internet, such as e-mails, pictures, videos, blogs, etc instead of on your computer. Some may think that somehow Google and cloud computing are related. Well, yes. Even though Google was not the one who invented the technology or even the term “cloud computing”, Google makes it popular.

A lot of us have been using e-mails long before Google existed. Hotmail, Yahoo, Rocketmail were the top players I can think of. But Google pushes even further. It doesn’t only provide e-mail, but with Google has also Google Calendar and Google Docs, among other things. On Google Calendar you can write appointments and deadline you normally write on Outlook, for example. You can create, edit and share your documents with Google Docs on the internet. This way you don’t need Microsoft Office and hard disk at all. You can say, cloud computing is a Office killer. At least Google hopes so.

But, how safe and secure is it? This article from CNN can explain better than me.

Google and Amazon guaranteed 99.99% uptime for paying customers. “Paying” here is the key. What about the non-paying users? I have been using Google Mail for 4 years, Google Calendar and Docs for 2 years, and I’m never disappointed. True, like other services, Google has its downtime (by the way, here are 5 things to do when Gmail is down). But usually it doesn’t take long, usually fewer than 2 hours, to get it back up again.

I also have accounts on Facebook and Flikr, and they are just as reliable as ever. I mean, this fear that data could be lost is unnecessary. It helps when you have backups somewhere else, which you should do anyway. And of course, you have to use common sense regarding security. Do not put sensitive information, such as password and bank records on public websites. Never.

Having said that, I’m all for cloud computing.