For most of us, Google shutting down Reader was annoying. For Jacob Cook, it was a call to arms.
He’s now building an operating system that anyone can use to replace all of the services that Google provides — or any other cloud company, for that matter. Email, chat, file sharing, web hosting: With Cook’s arkOS, you’ll be able to run all of those essential services on a secure, private server in your own home that’s about the size of a credit card.
“Google, while it is a great service that has done wonderful things for the Web, is showing some troubling signs,” Cook told me. “Their shutdown of Google Reader earlier this year means that none of the services [we] rely upon are sacrosanct if they are not profitable enough for them.”