![]() In a blog post to customers, Wuala has just announced that it is to shut down.Įffective as of today, you will no longer be able to purchase storage or renew existing accounts. Philippe Spruch, founder and CEO of LaCie, said that the partnership would lead LaCie to transform from a hardware manufacturer to a “digital storage provider”. In fact, at the time the two companies talked up the deal as a “merger” rather than one acquiring the other. A traditional hardware storage maker picking up an expert in cloud storage software. ![]() ![]() Despite exiting pretty early instead of scaling to become a leader in the space (in then somewhat typical European style), the deal made a lot of sense. ![]() When seeing “Creating a Device”, I thought that it wanted to partition a drive for its own use.Back in 2009, hardware storage company LaCie acquired Wualu, a Zurich-based startup and pioneer in peer-to-peer cloud storage. It uses the term “Create a Device” when it means “Set up your computer”. I found Spideroak’s installation procedure a little confusing. The most complex is Wuala, which also enables you to trade your own disk space in return for online storage.Īll three providers store previous versions of files. There is no drag and drop from your file manager.Īll of the providers have simple pricing structures based on data stored. Spideroak works by selecting folders in its interface. It gives you a drive though, rather than a single folder. A folder is created on your computer which you drag into. There are folders with Creative Commons music and videos, for example.ĭropbox is the easiest tool to use, which is why it’s so successful. You can create folders which are public to everyone on Wuala. One thing that’s unique to Wuala is globally shared folders. This is usually achieved by clicking on an share option, then being given a URL to share with others. This can make it susceptible to PATRIOT Act requests as well as illegal breaches.Īll three providers allow you to share your information with others you know easily. Dropbox stores its data on the Amazon’s S3 service. This means, it is impossible for them to ever look into files that you have stored in the cloud. For example, neither of them send your password to the companies’ servers. Wuala and Spideroak focus on security very heavily. In their eyes, providing a pure web application would mean that they would need to be able to access your information. Wuala does this because the data is decrypted only by local machines. Yes, that’s every browser with an add-on. In order to access your information, you need to have a web browser that supports Java applets. Wuala suffers ever so slightly in this space. Dropbox goes further and supports Blackberry. DetailsĪll three providers support Linux, OS X & MS Windows.Īll three providers support Android & iPhone. Your data is encrypted before it is sent to their machines and their staff don’t know your password to decrypt it. It uses central servers, like Dropbox to store your data, but maintains a ‘no knowledge’ approach. Spideroak also prides itself for its ability to keep your data secure. This peer-to-peer system creates instant, global redundancy for your data. This could be attractive where you have an external hard drive with free capacity. In fact, rather than buying storage space, you are able to trade space on your own hard drive. It encrypts your data, then uploads it into a global peer-to-peer network. In addition to being a pure backup solution, it enables you to share data securely with people you trust. Wuala has a greater emphasis on sharing and security. These include being able to create shared folders easily. It focused on creating a simple, attractive interface with minimal, useful features. That’s about the limit of what Dropbox does. ![]() When asked about why it has been success a success, Michael Wolfe makes the point that the ideal backup solution would look like the following: This is largely because of its simplicity. down to $0, if you share your own hard drive capacity.ĭropbox has been a clear leader in online storage.
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