Re: another lesson
"What happens when (not if) it shuts down?"
Given the price of the printer...I go buy a different one. ;-)
Your point about intermediaries is valid though, but then aren't so many things dependent upon some sort of third party service? (if nothing else, it means phoning home and telemetry are baked into the service)
Oh look, on this very day... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/17/nest_outage/