Just How Big IS the Cloud?

 Once in a while, I will do something silly, like reengage Google and Amazon integration on my laptop. Just to sync everything up. Now, if you're not careful, these apps start to suck everything in from your devices, from photos and documents, to images from other apps. This is how you unknowingly clog up your free allotment of space, and FAAMG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google) gleefully talks you into buying more cloud space.

About a month or so back, I had reinstalled an old CD copy of SimCity 3000. Windows 98 old. Cringe old. After attempting to play it for about 5 minutes, I had to give it up. The graphics reflected the tech of the time. "I'll uninstall it later", I told myself. But not before I had forgotten about it and reengaged Google. So imagine my surprise as my laptop slowed to a crawl as Google is Hoovering up umpteen zillion gifs and jpegs from the SimCity graphics files. I put a stop to it, and uninstalled the Google and Amazon apps, and SimCity, until I could clean up my cloud storage.

This got me to thinking. My cloud drive is bursting with what I deemed as unnecessary texture images. But are they? Most of us know that FAAMG relies on the petabytes of data we provide to them daily to fine tune their AI algorithms. As we proceed to transition into spatial computing, FAAMG is charging along with parallel development of the AR cloud. How many of us have unwittingly allowed our game graphics to be uploaded into the servers as well?

Very soon, popular virtual worlds will be as mapped out as the default world. And that will be in some small amount due to our allowing textures to be uploaded to the cloud. We (including personal AI agents) will do a search, and textures already in the cloud will be anchored to VR and gaming locations, allowing FAAMG's algorithms to say "Your search for Mom & Pop Shoppe has been located in City Skylines, Westlake, 12th Corridor, 122, 683, 192" (or whatever the XYZ coordinates would be).

So. Do you want to keep your textures in the cloud? At first, I was against it. Now, I'm not so sure!