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Comment by kapilkale | Hacker News Reader

I can't think of a specific example where I personally am concerned about it. As long as demand for a cloud service is real and profitable to serve, some entity will do it.

Data portability is only a problem with unproven services. If Facebook were to shut down, photo and data export services would immediately crop up.

I'm more concerned about the opposite scenario, where I own something and mismanage it, like losing my hard drive without backup, or having a disaster hit my car / house where I don't have the proper insurance.

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I'd be very concerned about Spotify, which is losing money. Although they have massive revenue, they end up immediately paying nearly all of it to record labels. http://hypedsound.com/news/details/SPOTIFY-FINANCIALS-DEEMED... - Link includes a talk by Dalton Caldwell about why anyone doing what Spotify does is basically doomed.

And content portability is definitely a problem with Amazon. Instant Video and Kindle both use DRM, so an export service would likely be illegal, and certainly nontrivial. Amazon could suddenly deny you access to your “purchases”: http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-y...

The other services don't seem as risky in terms of data loss, although Facebook could suddenly make your photos more public than you set them to be; they've taken many similar steps before.

I pay for Spotify, and paid for Mog before Spotify was in the US. I suspect Spotify is break-even or makes money on paid users, so I'm not worried about it.

Amazon is a more interesting case because I'm paying per piece of content, and I don't get to keep the content. If they shut down Video, I'd lose the value of my library (~$200). But the chances of that seem so low compared to what I have at stake to lose.

Surely the massive revenue would be an incentive for the record labels to keep Spotify alive.

Spotify is obviously still in the land grab phase. I pay $5 a month for it, and would easily pay at least 6 times that, maybe more.

Furthermore, the vast majority of its users are still freeloaders. I think a sizeable percentage would convert to paying customers if Spotify started to throttle back the free accounts or play more ads. Its an incredible service at a great value, especially when you cough up a tiny bit of money to get rid of the ads.

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