Hasn't it meant that for many decades now? Originating as a cloud symbol on network diagrams, but not long after used as a word when people wanted to talk about said diagrams. I certainly remember using it in the 90s, so it has meant that for at least that long. You make it sound like we've only recently come to this determination.
"Cloud" today is typically used with a more specific meaning, to refer to services such as IaaS or PaaS, which didn't exist in the 90s.
I don't remember encountering the word "cloud" in the 90s used in the way you describe. The cloud could be a symbol for a telephone network, a packet-switched network (including the internet), a company WAN, etc. Typically you'd refer to whatever the cloud symbol was supposed to represent, it wouldn't be called "the cloud" unless I suppose you were discussing the diagram itself.
Exactly. Hence why services like AWS were said to be cloud services. The details not mattering was the value proposition being sold.
> PaaS, which didn't exist in the 90s.
It did, except we called it time-sharing back then.
> The cloud could be a symbol for a telephone network, a packet-switched network (including the internet), a company WAN, etc.
While you are right that the parent did specifically say internet, I am not sure there is a meaningful distinction anymore. Telephony, packet-switched networks, WANs, etc. are all, for the most part, a part of the internet now. The exceptions are exceptional and thus can be ignored.
First, that’s not what they were called at the time.
Second, those older systems aren’t what either term actually refers to.
(Selling time on a mainframe would be closer to IaaS than PaaS anyway - in fact IBM’s VM/CMS even used the VM abstraction, which compute in most IaaS environments depend on.)
Your position only works if you ignore the actual extant definitions of what “cloud” or “PaaS” actually refer to.
Which is what, back when network diagrams were still cool, would have been drawn as a a cloud — something that your network depends on, but something whose details don't matter. And what one would have called a cloud if they were talking about said diagram.
The word didn't magically appear out of nowhere. These services were named cloud services because that's what name we had already reserved for them.
I remember when "cloud computing" was stuff like SETI@Home where a bunch of decentralized, distributed nodes all contributed computing power. But I think that's called the Blockchain now?
I don't know. I usually live under a rock.