Getting started with computers
What is "the cloud", really?
“The cloud” is one of those phrases used constantly by people who never stop to explain it, which leaves a lot of sensible people nodding along and quietly wondering.
Here is the honest version.
It is somebody else’s computer
That is genuinely all it is.
When something is “in the cloud”, it is stored on a computer in a large building somewhere, owned by a company like Apple, Google, Microsoft or Amazon, and reached over the internet.
There is nothing floating, nothing mysterious, and nothing airborne. It is a warehouse full of hard drives, with very good air conditioning, a security guard, and a backup generator.
The word “cloud” was chosen by marketing people. Had they called it “our warehouse”, everybody would have understood immediately.
Why anyone bothers
Storing things in a warehouse rather than on your own device has real advantages:
It survives your device. Phone stolen, laptop dropped, house flooded. The files are elsewhere and unaffected.
It reaches all your devices. A photo taken on your phone appears on your tablet. A document started on the computer can be finished on the laptop.
It is professionally looked after. Those companies keep multiple copies across separate buildings. That is a far higher standard of care than any of us apply at home.
It does not run out in the same way. A phone has a fixed amount of space. Cloud storage can simply be increased.
And the genuine downsides
Being fair about this matters, because the drawbacks are real.
No internet, no files. Mostly. Both Apple and Google keep recent items on the device itself, so it is less absolute than it sounds, but a poor connection makes everything slower and more frustrating.
It costs money once you pass the free allowance. More on that below.
You are trusting a company. With their security, their pricing decisions, and their continued existence. These are large and stable companies, but it is still somebody else’s building.
Accounts can be locked. Rare, but it happens, and being locked out of an account can mean being locked out of everything in it. This is the strongest argument for keeping a second copy at home as well.
The storage that keeps running out
This is where most people first encounter the cloud, usually through an irritating message saying storage is full.
The free allowances are deliberately small:
- Apple iCloud: 5GB
- Google: 15GB, shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos
- Microsoft OneDrive: 5GB
Five gigabytes is not much. A few hundred photos and some videos will use it.
You then have three choices:
- Pay. Usually a few dollars a month for a great deal more space. For most households this is the sensible option, and the family plans are shared across everybody.
- Clear space. Delete old videos, which are far larger than photos, and empty the deleted items folder, which still counts against your total until you do.
- Turn it off and manage backups yourself. Reasonable, but only if you genuinely will. Most people intend to and do not.
Is it safe?
For ordinary household use, yes, with a caveat worth understanding.
The companies protect the data well. Their security is far better than anything a home user could manage, and they keep multiple copies in separate places.
The weak point is your account, not their building. Nearly every story about someone’s cloud files being accessed comes down to a stolen or reused password, not a break-in at a data centre.
Which means the two things that actually keep your cloud storage safe are:
- A strong, unique password used nowhere else
- Two-factor authentication turned on
Do those two and your files are, realistically, safer there than on the laptop.
What I would actually recommend
Use it for photos. Automatic phone backup is the single best use of cloud storage, and it protects the thing people most regret losing.
Use it for documents you would hate to lose. Anything financial, legal or genuinely irreplaceable.
Do not rely on it alone. Keep a copy on an external drive in a drawer, updated once or twice a year. Two copies, one of them not in your house, is the rule.
Pay for the storage if you need it. People spend a remarkable amount of energy avoiding a charge of a few dollars a month, and then lose the photos.
The phrase you can now ignore
When somebody tells you a service is “cloud-based”, they have told you almost nothing, other than that it lives on a computer elsewhere rather than on yours.
It is not a feature. It is a location.
If you would like a hand setting this up sensibly, without ending up paying for three services that do the same thing, that is a common and straightforward session. Get in touch.