Yesterday, Bill Gurley tweeted:

It is clear that US tech companies are about to suffer from NSA activity. Politics aside, this is really, really bad for Silicon Valley.

He’s of course correct. It’s been a wonderful surprise for lots of non-US companies who suddenly have a rather compelling argument to make against their US-based competitors.

It goes further than that, however, I would think. It is just as bad for “Cloud” as in “give me all your data, and don’t worry about it any more”. And in this case, it applies to US and non-US-based companies.

All other things being equal, would you prefer your e-mail to be on a box that you physically control (and can switch off, for example), or somewhere “in the cloud” where you have no idea what happens to it? Your photos? Your financials? Your health data?

Yes, all other things aren’t equal, and there are still compelling cost advantages to “cloud”. But if I were in the SaaS business, I’d be worried. Fortunately, we build Personal Clouds, which provide exactly that personal control.