Computer Help and Support

Skittles is not wrong describing it as "someone else's computer".

"The cloud", whether we're talking about OneDrive/Google Drive or some other flavor, simply implies a centralized storage location that is independent of the computer/device from which you access it, as opposed to localized storage like your hard drive, which is only accessible from the physical computer to which it is attached, unless you share it.

There are many different kinds of "cloud" service, and many different ways to reach them. In the case of google drive, for example, you can navigate to it through a menu on Gmail, or you can access it directly via a dedicated domain name like drive.google.com.

And then there are some types of remote storage (cloud), like iSCSI, which can be mapped directly to a drive letter just like a regular hard drive physically present in your system.

The universal characteristic is that the cloud storage is completely independent of your computer or device. Lose your phone, and you lose the contacts that are stored internally, but not the ones that are on your Google/Samsung/whatever account. You can just plug your cloud credentials into your new phone, and there's all your stuff.