SiliconBeat

With everyone talking breathlessly about cloud computing, it seems I rarely hear this mega-trend being called into question. The advantages of moving your computing onto the Internet seem clear: Lower costs, more efficient management of resources. What’s not to like?

According to BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker, the answer is: Plenty.

I had a fascinating conversation with Klinker about the state of his company, BitTorrent of San Francisco, which became the basis for my Sunday column about how TV remains the dominant way we consume video.

But one subject that didn’t fit into the column was Klinker’s views on cloud computing. In short, he sees the move to cloud computing to be a trend that runs counter to the very nature of the Internet.

“Cloud computing is a harkening back to centralizing everything,” Klinker said. “That’s just not the model that made the Internet so powerful.”

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Yahoo is shutting down its Briefcase tool that allows users to store files online and then access them from anywhere. We know because Yahoo sent a message to our Yahoo mail account telling us.

We will be officially closing Yahoo! Briefcase on Read the rest of this entry »

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Over the next five year, spending on cloud-computing services is expected to “grow almost threefold, reaching $42 billion by 2012 and accounting for 9% or revenues in five key market segments, according to a release Monday from market-research firm IDC. ” More importantly, spending on cloud computing will accelerate throughout the forecast period, capturing 25% of IT spending growth in 2012 and nearly a third of growth the following year.”

One of the trends IDC says will accelerate the adoption of Internet-centric computing, which employs an “online delivery and consumption models for business and consumer services”, is the Read the rest of this entry »