I can see it causing a general lack of trust in SaaS for the average home user.
As it should. Unfortunately, current tech isn't there for the regular user; it still isn't even there for the technically-inclined user who has a better grasp on the risks going in. There are very few solid services out of there right now, and the vast majority of them are only a platform for the techie to build the user-facing services and/or are highly domain-specific.
I totally agree there is no good way for a regular, or even techie, user to tell when a service is a fly-by-night. What do you have to gauge them on? How good of graphic design they have for their website only tells you how much they care about putting up a pretty face, which is not necessarily tied to the quality of product at all. The internet is so full of both PR and unwarranted rage, where do you even start to gauge the quality of a service?
It gets really, really difficult. I thought megaupload was a look-the-other-way-as-much-as-legally-possible-while-piracy-happens operation because I was only knew about it because of people who used it to pirate. But at the same time there were plenty of people who thought they were what they advertized themselves as, I even had buisness contacts at large reputable organizations that used them to email me big files all the time.
As it should. Unfortunately, current tech isn't there for the regular user; it still isn't even there for the technically-inclined user who has a better grasp on the risks going in. There are very few solid services out of there right now, and the vast majority of them are only a platform for the techie to build the user-facing services and/or are highly domain-specific.
I totally agree there is no good way for a regular, or even techie, user to tell when a service is a fly-by-night. What do you have to gauge them on? How good of graphic design they have for their website only tells you how much they care about putting up a pretty face, which is not necessarily tied to the quality of product at all. The internet is so full of both PR and unwarranted rage, where do you even start to gauge the quality of a service?
It gets really, really difficult. I thought megaupload was a look-the-other-way-as-much-as-legally-possible-while-piracy-happens operation because I was only knew about it because of people who used it to pirate. But at the same time there were plenty of people who thought they were what they advertized themselves as, I even had buisness contacts at large reputable organizations that used them to email me big files all the time.