The only data loss to Google that I was able to find was [0], where a single datacenter was hit by lightning 4 times in short succession, and 0.000001% of disk space in said datacenter was lost. And only because the lost data consisted of recent writes that had yet to be backed up. And only because the lightning affected the AUX power systems in a way that they have since committed to fixing (or perhaps have fixed).
IMO, cloud storage is the most reliable way to store data, and Google the most reliable. I never know if I'm going to drop my laptop and lose all work. Or if the harddrive in my server is going to give up and burst into flames. But the great thing about cloud storage is that it abstracts away hardware components and failures so it's somebody else's problem. And they worry a lot more about data loss than I do. Cloud data storage is designed with the assumption that hardware is faulty. Spread redundant copies of data to geographically isolated datacenters, and you're much safer than some admin of averagejoe.com keeping his data on a single harddrive in his closet.
[0] - https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/compute/15056#57195...
(disclaimer: my life would probably be ruined by losing the gmail account I've held since private-beta days, because life is short and I'm shit at sysadmin; but there's a big difference between a lone old geek and large organizations...)
[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2548010/Has-G...
[2] http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/03/01/googl...
For more serious data, I have to imagine that SLAs generally define data retention periods even after exiting the agreement, right? (I legitimately don't know)
Obviously it doesn't help if the company goes under, but it's not as simple as the parent commenters statement.
That said, over the years I've witnessed all manner of billing and payment fuckups. I'm not trying to say that cloud is bad -- but that billing snafu is a risk factor that you need to understand and account for.
Does Google publish any durability numbers? Amazon claims 99.999999999% (11 9's) for S3 and Glacier (and considerably worse for EBS volumes). How does Google compare?
No, back in the day, you could still wipe years of records because most people only used a single filing cabinet with no duplication or off-site copies. "Destroyed in a fire" was the canonical way to destroy all records, easily. This story has nothing to do with the introduction of IT. Incompetence is still incompetence.
http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/fire-197...
Bernard: Shall I file it?
Hacker: Shall you file it? Shred it!
Bernard: Shred it?
Hacker: No one must ever be able to find it again!
Bernard: In that case, Minister, I think it's best I file it.
We know a lot more about conquered Mesopotamian kingdoms than we do about successful ones, because step one after taking over a city was apparently burning it down, or at least burning down the palace.
And the answer when shit happens is "outsource! Go to the cloud!" -- so that local managers won't be responsible when the snafu happens and data is lost (if it happens to Google, it can and will happen to anyone).
Progress, eh.