gdgt

This has been a big week on the cloud front. Not only has Google finally introduced their long-awaited Google Drive service, with 5GB of free storage, but the HTC One S is out now, and comes with 25GB of free Dropbox space, presumably to make up for the phone's lack of a microSD card slot. Meanwhile, Microsoft has finally made Skydrive easier to use, though new users will get just 7GB of free space, compared with the 25GB Microsoft previously offered. And, not to be left out, Apple has let it be known that its iCloud service now has 125 million users.

This all sounds pretty good, especially if you frequently share files with friends or colleagues, or need easy access to your files on multiple computers, smartphones, tablets and other devices. But is cloud-based storage something that you're prepared to rely on for access to important files on a regular basis? Are you concerned about security and privacy implications? Do you think HTC's move presages an era of reduced internal storage and greater cloud dependence for smartphones? And what about those times when you need to look at an important document on your smartphone and find that you're over your data cap -- or worse, in a dead zone?

Of course, the better a cloud-based service is at syncing and caching, the less of an issue that is. But, for many people, the cloud remains a hazy, shady place, which helps explain why as many as 100 million flash drives are still sold each year. Sharing files via Dropbox may be easy, but for some people, carrying them in their pocket and sharing them by sneakernet is a habit that's not so easy to break.

What do you think?