My own opinion is that "The Cloud" will fail only if things get _really_ bad. Many who are currently laid off may be getting to that point; but for the cloud to actually fail it has to be more than just some customers. It's got to be businesses and power users.

Given how power users are likely to be "Essential", and how businesses might scale back but otherwise avoid major changes, those demographics will only pull out past a different inflection point. It will take things being dire on a wide scale; whole companies and industries failing. When that happens society as a whole can be seen as failing.

If we do ever get to the point that "cloud fails" we should really hope for a new new deal.