Recently some people

lost all their stuff on Gmail. Which rather vindicates my reservations about using online services for critical stuff. I definitely count my email and address book as critical stuff, which is why - despite temptations - I resolutely stick to running Thunderbird on my POP account for all my important email. And this is also precisely why I agonized over moving to an online blogging solution too, persuaded finally by the capability for Blogger to email all my posts back to my email account as they are created. It's not that I feel that all my stuff is irreplaceable or in most cases terribly valuable, just that I know from long computing experience that it's the odd thing that really is important that will be lost.

Keep it local if you can!