Really? I know lots of folks, within the industry and without, who use cloud backup services like Carbonite and Crashplan precisely because they are so much more convenient than maintaining a physical backup scheme, however simple. I veer in the other direction, because I trust USB HDDs in my physical possession more than I trust Crashplan or Carbonite not to screw up, but the argument from convenience is not an unreasonable one, and I'd say it certainly does count as the cloud "respond[ing] to popular demand".
My personal remote backup provider (Backblaze) is as cloudy as the FTP. Sending (hopefully) encrypted bytes and retrieving them is not what cloud is for me.
What I consider "cloud" is closer to google app engine.
Really? I know lots of folks, within the industry and without, who use cloud backup services like Carbonite and Crashplan precisely because they are so much more convenient than maintaining a physical backup scheme, however simple. I veer in the other direction, because I trust USB HDDs in my physical possession more than I trust Crashplan or Carbonite not to screw up, but the argument from convenience is not an unreasonable one, and I'd say it certainly does count as the cloud "respond[ing] to popular demand".