Netflix was down for several hours yesterday. This, on the day that its stock price was never higher. And not to pat myself on the back too much, but this is pretty much exactly what I had predicted two days when I warned y’all about some of the dangers of the cloud: these services can go down without a moment’s notice, and you’re left staring at the TV saying “what gives?”
To Netflix’s credit, the streaming service was only down for a few hours, maybe three hours in total. There may have been hiccups after that, but service was largely restored.
And Netflix, for all its goodness—no one’s saying it’s “bad,” mind you—but isn’t exactly a vital service. Not being able to see, I don’t know, Fred The Movie, isn’t really a matter of national security.
But as more and more things move to The Cloud—how many of your important documents are spread across various Google accounts?—it’s just something to keep in mind.
There’s something to be said about keeping a local copy of all your stuff, is all.