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Where things live

What is the cloud?

In one line

Someone else's always-on computer, online.

“The cloud” just means a computer somewhere else — in a data centre — that you reach over the internet, instead of your own laptop. Your photos in Google Photos, your files in Dropbox: they live “in the cloud.” When you build something and put it online, it runs on a cloud computer that's always switched on so others can reach it.