1) I see data cloud: can you compare it with storj, maidsafe and opal drive? Do we need http://www.nxttechnologytree.com/nxt-technology/nxt-distributed-storage in order to be a distributed Google Drive?
Our feature is much simpler and we cannot claim that we provide distributed storage, we don't plan to compete with those specialized distributed storage systems. What we have right now is a simple all or nothing choice, a node can either archive all prunable data, or none. In the long term, this is not scalable of course, but is sufficient for now. If and when the data volume increases, we can first start improving the granularity of selecting what types of data to keep for how long, e.g. a node might want to archive prunable messages, but not tagged data, or only tagged data for some specific channel, or only data submitted from specific accounts, and so on. When we reach a data volume that even this is not enough, we can decide either to dedicate development efforts to implement real distributed storage, or consider not reinventing the wheel but partnering with one of those platforms and store data on it, with some cross-blockchain transactions to pay for the storage.
What is important is that once data is created as prunable, we have the flexibility to later change exactly which data is stored for how long and on which nodes. So as long as the data volume is low, we can keep it simple, and later when the need arises, spend efforts on doing it more efficiently.
