This is a hard problem. Offering autonomy and ownership of data to non-techy people is HARD.

Although I'm not at all convinced Umbrel is the right answer, they seem to be on the right track. Can they empower regular people to own their data without causing havoc down the road if they run out of money and go out of business? I'm sceptical, but I do respect them for trying to tackle this head on. But having skimmed their website, they could do a better job of building trust and answer the long-term question of what happens if they fail.

I do believe this is a growing market, giving people who are fed up with BigTech a way out that does not require that you are a nerd. I am only worried people can be scared it this goes wrong. Paying a premium for rather basic hardware if the setup and software is super smooth could be perfectly acceptable to non-techies that do not at all want the hassle of maintaining a custom NAS.

>I do believe this is a growing market, giving people who are fed up with BigTech

Most people I interact with don't even think about "Big Tech" in this way. They don't question iCloud storage, Google Drive or Google Workspace, Microsoft OneDrive etc.

They do sometimes get upset about right to repair, AI, and sometimes I hear about net neutrality or how Google search sucks, or how Facebook is privacy invasive.

To reiterate though, the core services like a product like this would replace - Google Drive, iCloud Drive, OneDrive etc. - that is not on the radar. Let alone having functional seamless replacements for email or calendar or contacts etc.

These are people adept at using technology too, there simply is no reason to invest in these types of products to them.

The reason these companies struggle is because mass market doesn't care about this enough first and foremost. They aren't seamless drop in replacements.

They don't handle my phone backups, for example, wirelessly and seamlessly. They don't offer seamless contact sharing, photo sharing and sometimes even file sharing is so clunky compared to a Google Drive link, or an iCloud download link.

How do they handle expiry on a link address for said share?

At best, what you have here is an on premise redundant storage drive and little else. It doesn't have the seamless features to do what the other services do. Even if its on the spec sheet, the experience isn't seamless enough. This is the same problem Nextcloud has been trying to solve for some time.

I think among technologists, the market for this is growing, but thats been the case for some time, its simply reaching more and more of us. This being a knock out commercial success where every 3rd person you know is buying something like this? That isn't happening in the foreseeable future.

> Can they empower regular people to own their data

Unless they make their software fully open and make the devices hackable, no.

I'm glad to pay for cloud hosting because at least I know my money is getting me some degree of service in return. The risk that my iCloud data will be lost in the next five years is very low. The risk that this company will disappear in the next five years and I've got a $500 paperweight is exceedingly high.