With the cloud, it all depends on the expectation, and what is being offered to the customer. With facebook, I don't expect them to be around forever, and if they die today, I lose nothing. For netflix, if they die at the end of the billing cycle, then I lose nothing. For amazon, if they die right now, I lose nothing.
Now suppose I have a router or AP that is entirely managed in the cloud, if they die, then the product I spend money on, becomes a paperweight, and I have to spend more money to buy new hardware the do the exact same thing and likely the same performance as the old hardware.
From a consumer standpoint, when you buy a product that offers a specific function that shouldn't need the cloud, then they are buying it with the expectation that it will die at any moment, The average customer will not feel comfortable buying a product if they know that the CEO of the company had what is effectively a kill switch of the product the consumer was using.
Would you buy a cloud reliant pacemaker?
Would you buy a cloud reliant CPU? There are many people who are still using their core i7 2600k in their gaming PC (because when overclocked, it does not really bottleneck modern games). How would those users feel if their CPU relied on Intel keeping a special DRM like server running, and how would that feeling be if Intel killed the server 2 years after the release of the CPU?
The cloud is perfectly fine for services that truly benefit from it (e.g., can you imagine facebook working without the "cloud" (download the entirety of facebook and then use the site to chat with yourself).
As a forum member recently showed with a cloud reliant AP, a product you purchase can be crippled at the whims of a company (I highly doubt that the change was a unintentional, as such a change would never make it past QA if it was unintentional).
When you buy a non cloud reliant product, you can use it with confidence knowing that it will offer its functionality for as long as you want to use it.
I have been to factories which still have equipment running DOS, if those systems required a "cloud" service to function, do you think that the cloud service would be available and maintained from the 80's, all with no additional cost?
At the consumer level, the cloud always increases the total cost of ownership of the physical device. As seen with cloud reliant security cameras, APs, and various other products, they start to charge reoccurring fees to previously free functions For example moving the web UI from being locally hosted on the device or a local system, and shifting it to a remote server that you now have to pay a monthly fee to access it. Or if you look at some cloud reliant security cameras, you are often charged a steep monthly fee to record footage, all while providing a lesser experience (e.g., you often will not get a very responsive timeline that you can scrub through in order to quickly spot something of interest that may not be in your motion detect zone). If I wanted 5 cameras recording to the cloud, I would spend a lot of money, especially if I wanted 4-8TB of storage of the footage. For me, the one time upfront cost of the system because it will offer its full functionality. If Western Digital goes out of business, my 4TB WD red drives will still work. If Intel goes out of business, the CPU in the system will still work. If Asus goes out of business, the motherboard in the system will still work. If Nvidia goes out of business, the GPU will still continue to work.
I can pay a netflix subscription to get tons of good entertainment in the form of well made movies and TV shows. Why would I want to convert to a system and pay an even higher monthly cost to record footage like this (recorded this a few weeks back).
(detail is not present but the action can be considered NSFW in terms of what the neighbor is doing to my fence).
Compare the cost of a 5 IP camera system recording to a local system, to the cost of having 5 dropcams in addition to paying for their recording service for the cameras. (If I was willing to pay that kind of money, I would just work on tiling my walls with new harddrives instead of deleting old footage).
Quote from their site
"1st Dropcam: $29.95 / month or $299 / year (two months free!)
Each additional Dropcam on 30-day cloud recording, 50% discount: $14.95 / month or $149 / year (that's two months free!)"
A cloud reliant physical product, is the worst state to be in as a consumer, It primes you for far more abuse because you are anchored to a cloud service. With things like netflix, crunchyroll and various other services, it is easy to drop them if they try and screw you over, but if you have a physical product tied to it, and say the company does an unnecessary price increase, you will be more likely to accept it if the alternative means that you have to turn your expensive product into a paperweight.