Landlords of the Internet?

June 17th, 2009 by Jeff P.

Yesterday Opera Labs unveiled Opera Unite, which essentially turns the Opera web browser into a web server. Over at their blog, Lawrence Eng writes:

Our computers are only dumb terminals connected to other computers (meaning servers) owned by other people — such as large corporations — who we depend upon to host our words, thoughts, and images. We depend on them to do it well and with our best interests at heart. We place our trust in these third parties, and we hope for the best, but as long as our own computers are not first class citizens on the Web, we are merely tenants, and hosting companies are the landlords of the Internet. (http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/06/16/)

But is “landlords of the Internet” an appropriate epithet for hosting companies? Consider for a moment what hosting companies bring to the table:

Throughput. The ability to serve a lot of content quickly to a lot of people. Anyone who’s done (legal, I hope) P2P file sharing from a home PC can attest to the fact that you can serve a few people quickly, or a lot of people slowly. But not a lot of people quickly.
Security. What’s the current statistic, 1 in 3 home computers infected with a virus? Meanwhile, hosting companies take great care to secure their servers from hacker attacks. Remember those horror stories where people installed file sharing programs only to unwittingly share sensitive documents like their tax returns?
Availability. A hosting company can offer a 100% uptime guarantee, or a “5-nines” (99.999%) uptime promise. I don’t think a month goes by at my home connection when I don’t lose connectivity and have to power-cycle my Internet access device. Oh, and don’t forget that your Opera Unite page is only available when your PC or laptop is powered on.

I guess if I had to choose an analogy, it would be the tale of the Three Little Pigs against the big, bad wolf. Relying on your home PC as a server is like trying to build a home out of straw or twigs. Sharing your files through a hosting company is like moving into the safe and reliable brick house. We don’t have a landlord/tenant relationship; we have a good roommate relationship.

Your thoughts?