Centralised Internet Services and Problems of Power

Even though the Internet and many of its early services come from a peer-to- peer based design, many of today's popular Internet services are built in a centralized fashion. Emerging technologies such as Cloud Computing make it easier to scale web-based applications up to millions of users. So not only new services, but also traditional applications are moving into the "cloud" and their software can only be used "as a service".

This talk will illustrate the trend towards centralised services and explain the reasons for this trend. More importantly, it will show how power is accumulated by service providers and what problems arise from this for users.

It will conclude with some solutions and strategies that can help users to remain in control of their computing and their data.