Personally, I love Google Maps, Bing 3D, Streetview, MapMyRide, and similar services. My husband thinks I'm nuts when I talk about these things. I am amazed that they exist and very curious about how they work. But are these services considered GIS in the cloud? I'm not really looking for an answer to that question. But I would like to talk a little more about why I'm not particularly excited about GIS in the cloud:

Unfortunately, I don't have the time for this new cloud GIS thing. I need something that works now. I do not have the luxury of finding time to search for some JavaScript that someone has written or to wait for someone to write an app that I have to find and figure out how to make work. Or, to test out a new technology that may change a year from now.

I have been working for city government for seven years. I have never been responsible for so many projects as in this job. And since I do not hold a GIS job title, I spend most of my time on non-GIS tasks. I do not feel like I have the luxury to play around with the cloud at work. Am I missing out? Yes. But every workday I need to make decisions about the best way to spend my time. When my director asks for a map, I can make a choice between using ArcView on my desktop, and using the cloud to respond to the map request. At this time, ArcView will win my vote hands down.  

I thank all the techno geeks out there for doing all they are doing in the cloud. But I guess I feel like cloud GIS is not quite ready for prime time yet. When it is, I'm sure I will be ready to learn to use it and be fascinated by it.