[Air-L] Pew Internet study: cloud computing popular, privacy worries linger

[Richard Forno]

Report link: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/262/report_display.asp  
for those interested.   --rf


http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080914-pew-cloud-computing-study-debuts-at-google-event-in-progress.html

Pew study: cloud computing popular, privacy worries linger
By Julian Sanchez | Published: September 14, 2008 - 05:55PM CT

A new survey by the Pew Internet and American Life project, released  
Friday morning at Google's Washington, DC headquarters, finds cloud  
computing applications taking off among Internet users. But  
respondents also told pollsters that they have profound concerns about  
ways their personal data might be used—among them, the kind of ad- 
targeting practiced by... Google.

As Internet users increasingly find themselves using multiple  
(potentially incompatible) networked devices to get online from a  
variety of locations, it should come as little surprise that large  
numbers of them are availing themselves of "cloud" services that  
offload computing or data storage functions to someone else's server,  
allowing e-mail, photos, or documents to be accessed anywhere. More  
than half of Internet users have used Web-based e-mail services, which  
study author John Horrigan called the "starter drug" of cloud  
computing, while just over a third have stored personal photos on  
sites like Flickr or Photobucket. Cloud apps like Google Documents and  
Adobe Photoshop Express were third most popular, with 29 percent of  
respondents saying they'd used one, while fewer than 10 percent had  
used Web-based services to store personal videos or back up their hard  
drives. All told, 69 percent of users had used at least one form of  
cloud computing; 40 percent had used two or more. For users under 30,  
those numbers jumped to 87 percent and 59 percent respectively.

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http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080914-pew-cloud-computing-study-debuts-at-google-event-in-progress.html