John C. Dvorak - The Bite of the ASP
"The fallout from future ASP failures will be serious. I-Drive's Bonforte reckons that the 30 or so firms currently providing Web-based disk storage will shake out to three big players. Projecting a 10-to-1 fallout ratio for all ASP categories, including site builders, finance sites and other online applications, is not unreasonable. Now is the time for you to protect yourself. Maybe it's time to reconsider the whole notion of online applications. The end is near."

Recently I backed up my online bookmarks and moved them to an assumedly safer place. Likewise, people would feel more comfortable if Blogger featured one-click backup. For all the interest I have in web apps, it's obvious many will fail. They should start implementing contigency plans and market them. If people get burnt once, it will be harder to get them to trust other ASPs that don't explicitely provide an easy and safe way out (fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me.)

04/26/01 update: ASP, The 1st Web mass extinction, and exit strategies

05/01/01 update: Jon Udell - The End Of Backup.

05/02/01 update: When ASPs go sour what do you do?

05/11/01 update: Web Services Are Great Until They Disappear.

05/30/01 update: Full Disclosure: When Services Die--A Survivor's Guide.

06/14/01 update: Stand up to service providers.

06/25/01 update: David Weinberger had "phantom carpal tunnel syndrome in [his] wrist" just thinking about all the cut-and-paste required to get data out of his CoolBoard threads. But he found someone who hacked a VBScript to do the job.

10/30/01 update: Dan Brinklin - Web Services, Business Models, and Storage