Digital Vellum is working on a project to help people store Photos for 100+ years.
That means I'm thinking about how to build a long-term, stable, resilient systems and business. I'd also love to see this applied to Google so it too can be a very very long term entity.
So I'm not an expert in this area but it seems that there are some ways that we can focus the business on long term value. Some are structural, others based on rethinking existing systems. I'm not an economist or an MBA by any stretch, but here goes:
- Sell annuities that pay out in storage/access "dividends" spread out over a long time.
- Create a wholly owned Mutual Society to manage storage and serving. Google can then become a Lloyds of London-stye "Name". [This entity could sell long-term/perpetual bonds that also have storage dividends]
- Create a customer-owned collective to manage long-term assets. Think of it as "Vanguard for Storage".
- We already store Photos for iPhone users, why not have each company back each other up and come up with coordinated storage systems with rights of survivorship.
- For the crytpocurrency angle use something like Streem () or Storj () Allow anyone to participate in a long-term storage system. This might be more adaptable.
And also remember to take our Photo Preservation Survey if you haven't already: