Message to Yahoo (and Cloud) customers: Get Out Now!

I like to think of this as an honorable act:

Slashdot | Yahoo Changes User Profiles, To Massive Outrage

... Yahoo decided to massively screw up their entire userbase by changing all user profiles to blank. No warning, no automated way to get data back, and other unwanted changes....

Yahoo is a publicly owned corporation. They can't, legally, put up a giant red announcement on their home page saying...

We're going down the tubes. You need to leave Yahoo now. Remember all that stuff about the Cloud computing? Well, the Price of the Cloud is 90% data lock. Data Lock means we own your data, and you can't move it. If we go down the tubes, you go down with us.

We are entering the the tubes now. The time has come. Salvage what you can, and take to the boats...

So, instead, they wipe out all the user profiles. It's kind of a "dog whistle" message to any customers with brains from Yahoo's inside geeks -- a back channel way to scream "get out now"!

Alas, most geeks have little sympathy for the naive user. They'll get their messages after the fact.

What about Yahoo Flickr? It will be sold. It's worth too much to just vanish. The transition may be rocky though, kind of like having your bank nationalized.

Think of this as one of life's less expensive lessons. We're going to learn the Price of the Cloud. Better sooner than later ...