You know... Up until this whole NSA/PRISM thing got uncovered, Microsoft had actually rather successfully started to rebuild the perception and image of its cloud-service Azure.
It had shown the world that in less than a year, it was well on its way to catch up with Amazon Web Services. It was going from an experiment to serious business. Something the company invested in. Even more so than the traditional parts of the business.
As someone who once looked at Azure and laughed it off, I was coming around, actually considering it. I don't have any inside info on this, but I would guess/assume Azure was just about to take off. All those investments, finally about to pay off.
Then the whole NSA/PRISM thing came about. Now there's no chance in hell I'm going there. Not that I expect AWS to be any better in that regard either. I'm currently pulling out my data from Google. I trust them even less.
Hell, at this point, the only viable option privacy-vice seems to be open-source software, deployed by me, to an account I control, hosted on a service-provider outside the US's reach.
It may not be immune to unauthorized, illegal snooping, but it will be off the main grid, take a bit more effort and it wont be done automatically 24/7.
If I become paranoid enough to put in the effort, I'll just get a VPS instead and encrypt the shit out of it.
(Disclaimer: Not a US citizen.)
I don't use the hate word often, but I HATE Microsoft now.
Just for the record, I think Dvorack is bang on with this article. Couldn't agree more.
That's exactly what I'm hoping will happen. It may be the only way to actually roll back most of this shameless and abusive mass spying of everything and everyone. I'm not sure what else would stop it. Americans protesting it? I'm not holding my breath for that one, and even if they do, they'll only try to fix the spying internally, as they couldn't care less what they do to the world as long as the government keeps telling them "it's to keep them safe" (which obviously trumps everyone else' rights).