For the most part, home automation is a horrible mess right now with incompatible proprietary systems that mostly don't even solve any particular problem.
That said, there's a definite tradeoff between having devices that just work and maintaining control over all the information storage and information flows. In the case of the parent comment, automatically backing up photos is actually a great feature for a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't back them up at all. But it's not so good when the service shuts down or your account gets hacked (as in the celebrity photos this past year).
There's a difference between doing it out of self-interest (Kodak, Apple) and providing a user service. It would be perfectly possible to provide automatic backups of photos via the user's choice of cloud (Dropbox, OneDrive etc) with the cloud service copying them to the user's chosen personal storage (PC, NAS, whatever).
That would work except for the people who don't and/or won't have any personal storage. However, if people won't look after their own data, I'm unlikely to be too sad when they lose it.
"Over the years I’ve received numerous emails from past and former Genius Bar support staff, telling similar stories of heartbreak. Customer comes in, their iPhone completely broken, or lost, or stolen, and they had precious photos and videos on it. The birth of a child. The last vacation they ever took with a beloved spouse who has since passed away. Did they ever back up their iPhone to a Mac or PC with iTunes? No. In many cases they don’t even know what “iTunes on a PC” even means. Or maybe they connected the iPhone to iTunes once, the day they bought it and needed to activate it, and then never again."
For many people it honestly is a choice between an automated cloud service and going without a safety net at all.
Do I personally depend on a cloud provider when I can avoid it? I try not to with anything I really care about. I use cloud providers but have plenty of my own backup systems as well. But I'm not the typical consumer.
You're not actually disagreeing with me. I didn't say anything against cloud services, only that they could be set up to benefit users rather than suppliers.
However, if people are too lame-brained to look after their own data, then I still won't feel sorry if they lose it. You can feel sorry if you want, but it won't make the tiniest bit of difference.
While paying for a service gives one more confidence and, if it's a large company, I'd be surprised if they just shut things down overnight, you don't really have meaningful recourse if they just go belly up or just make a really bad IT mistake. Ideally, use multiple storage locations--private and hosted.
With respect to the parent comment about Kodak, they actually transferred things to Shutterfly and photos supposedly did not just go away: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/05/business/la-fi-tech-... This also wasn't really a "free" service as it was supposedly a feature you got with the camera.
That said, there's a definite tradeoff between having devices that just work and maintaining control over all the information storage and information flows. In the case of the parent comment, automatically backing up photos is actually a great feature for a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't back them up at all. But it's not so good when the service shuts down or your account gets hacked (as in the celebrity photos this past year).