"The problems highlight one of the risks of relying on hosted applications providers, which offer to house software and its data for individuals and organizations."
What's with the unncessary bashing "hosted application providers"? I think it's safe to say that many more users would be affected by bugs and dead hard drives had they been running this on their personal computers, had this been a desktop application, like Frontpage.
It's a visibility thing. Millions of circuit breakers trip in homes every year. Not news. Millions of homes go dark at once? News.
Hosted apps have a risk (coordinated failure) that desktop apps generally do not. 100,000 hard drives don't all crash at once.
Also remember that it's in the interests of journalists to assume a tone of authority, to write in a way that mimics reasoned analysis: "this is part of a recent trend". It's a little gratuitous, but it's not unnecessary bashing.
What's with the unncessary bashing "hosted application providers"? I think it's safe to say that many more users would be affected by bugs and dead hard drives had they been running this on their personal computers, had this been a desktop application, like Frontpage.