In reply to donnacha.

Bye-bye Webhosting? Even COBOL lives on.

Ideally, you'd be fielding replies to good posts, forever. Some rejoinders being more worthy than others, granted.

I'd have to agree with Kingofnyct, that the IT biz model (Amazon, Uber, ad infinitum) does look suspect, Ponzi-like. Cloud, otoh, is potent tech; good for some things, not so much for others.

Webhosting is like full-service gasoline. At first users were afraid of it, so we charged to do it for them. Then they decided they could do it themselves. Then they figured out they could drive off without paying. Now we see full service again.

Chinese writing and their spoken language modified & guided each other, as they evolved. The same is true of computer & Internet hardware, software ... and webhosting.

We could deprecate hosting, live without it, but the world we have developed with it in mind & use, and it will (therefore) be the obvious solution to problems & needs we haven't yet discovered.

... but then, I always self-hosted. ;)