All of my websites have been hosted in the US, since moving to Media Temple back in April 2001. When The Computus Engine launched in 2008 it went straight to MT servers. Uptime has been fine and support has gotten a lot better. I even have hazy memories of a cab ride with the founders through the streets of Barcelona - so why am I moving? Well, a few things have changed this year.
Take privacy for example. You don't have to be paranoid to notice how fast our governments are moving towards blanket digital surveillance. This raises some obvious privacy and security concerns about hosting any data in the US, or the UK for that matter.
The second thing was attending this Worthing Digital talk by James Smith. I hadn’t previously been aware of the scale of power demanded by cloud computing data centres. With demand increasing well beyond capacity it’s no wonder rolling blackouts are becoming commonplace. As a Long Now member I know this situation is not sustainable in the long term.
The final thing was the announcement earlier today that Media Temple has been acquired by GoDaddy. I have real problems with GoDaddy, and I’m not alone.
So I’ll try and keep downtime to a minimum but I’m looking for a new web host. My current front runner is Greenqloud, an IaaS startup based in Iceland. Geographically this offers low latency to both Europe and the US, and politically it’s better than either. Crucially though it’s entirely powered by sustainable geothermal energy. More news when I have it.
