Largely ignored by this article is that fact that everyone needs a router. NASs are far from rare, the advantages of storage on the consumer side of a relatively slow internet connection have advantages.

So it's not really 10 watt local server vs a shared of a cloud. It should be something like 0.5 watts or similar to upgrade your home router to something that could provide internet services. Likely just double the ram and provide a microSD card for storage and that would be all you need. A 256GB microSD card, even a fast one is around $50.00.

Seems like a bit of smarts, like a CDN, or even IPFS and collectively home servers could make quite a bit of sense with close to zero power overhead.