Personally I would like to see society move in this direction. The data persistence guarantees should not be questionable, they should be legally enforced. I'm pretty sure we could come up with some terms that aren't realistically that onerous to Google (and other providers), but give users some assurances.
We're treading new ground with the concept of digital goods that are extremely cheap to manufacture, distribute, and store, and this idea that ubiquitously useful services can be provided to everyone for free by extracting value from the data generated by their usage. In the pre-digital era, the government "ordering Google to supply a service at no charge" would probably be an untenable precedent, but today that could happen with almost negligible impact to their business, because it already operates like that.
You and I both probably agree that the cloud is a significantly easier approach to organizing, storing, and using data than traditional approaches.
This is exactly why we should recognize it as a public utility and endeavor to reduce the inherent dangers, just like we go to great effort to make clean water available instead of teaching everyone how to test and treat it themselves.
I appreciate the discussion and your thoughtful and forthcoming attitude:) Makes the internet much more enjoyable to use when disagreements are carefully examined rather than the usual tendency in comment threads to degenerate into being just plain mean.
[1] https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
Disclaimer: Alphabet employee, but not related to the takeout service.
I believe that argument at hand is that massive digital services providers, by power of the market forces, had become just as essential part of our infrastructure as banks. Their behaviour has played a huge role in establishing this position and setting this expectation.
So, the philosophical question is whether Google, AWS, Facebook, et.al. are now "too big to fail" to be subjects of regulation due to their critical role in ensuring preservation and accessibility of human knowledge. They are already being regulated by tons of parties, domestic and foreign, to keep some (lots?) information inaccessible.
https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
You can download all your google data from there. I wish all cloud services provided such a feature.
There's also this key component: the average user is not Google's customer -- they never pay a penny for the services they receive. I think that you and I both agree that consumer protection laws are a good thing; if you pay for access to Google's data storage services then it should be illegal if they suddenly revoke that access. That is an obvious case of breach-of-contract.
Outside the context of a customer-business relation, this amounts to the government ordering Google to supply a service at no charge. Note that certain things (I believe in the states water) have to be given freely to people who request it, but I wouldn't dream of suggesting that access to data that you knowingly stored some place with questionable data persistence guarantees is as fundamental as access to water. You may disagree.
In the end, I suggest educating consumers about the generally sketchy cloud data persistence guarantees is easier and wiser than requiring companies to offer free services. You and I both probably agree that the cloud is a significantly easier approach to organizing, storing, and using data than traditional approaches. Since it has become so ubiquitous, its users should know the dangers. This avoids setting a somewhat strong precedent that such a protection law would make.
After a quick Google (heh, the irony!) there doesn't seem like there's an easy way to backup cloud data. This seems like it might actually be a good personal project for me...