Check out this Google horror story, about a guy who was using Google services for his email, blog, calendar, etc. He fell victim to a phishing attack, and Google deleted his account — all his data gone. At first Google said they weren’t willing to restore it; eventually they did thanks to publicity and connections.

This is exactly the kind of thing that makes me cautious about using online services for anything important. There are currently fourteen web-based spreadsheet services available, and I’m not using any of them. It’s not because they’re no good, but because I worry about whether I’ll be able to access my data a few years down the track. One advantage of having a long-lived de facto monopoly like Microsoft is that, 13 years later, I can still easily open a file I created in Excel 95.

I think I’m not the only person who cares about being able to access his data in 10 or 20 years’ time. Hopefully the online applications providers will realise this and support open document standards, as well as letting me download my data and keep my own copy.