Translated material
Andrey Travin. Volny
“File storage sites on the World Wide Web loom as the next big thing,” was the headline of an article in C|Net last summer. If you don't try to follow the literal translation, then this "thing" can be called the "new greatest service" on the Internet, comparable in its significance to the emergence of the innovative Internet services Netaddress and Geocities - pioneers of services, respectively, free email with a web interface and free hosting for everyone.
In general, the logic of the development of information technology was such that this service could not fail to appear. In an era when Oracle and Sun are busy advertising the benefits of the network computer (NC), it makes no sense to even talk about the specific origin of this idea. But among the main figures in the computer industry, Steven Jobs, the “father of the personal computer”, contributed more than others (wittingly or unwittingly) to strengthening this concept in the minds of users and businessmen.
The day Apple unveiled its iconic, floppy-drive-less iMac, some consumers cursed and competitors raised their eyebrows. However, in other respects, iMac was good and flew off the shelves of computer stores with a bang.
In such a situation, there was one entrepreneur who saw a good business opportunity in organizing file storage on the Internet for the owners of these machines. As a result, the iMacFloppy.com website, which launched in October 1998, was sold along with the platform-independent NetFloppy.com website for $1.65 million in May 1999 (a success in the US).
However, NetFloppy.com is just one of the small characters in this niche of network services and is far from the most typical, because providing 3-5 MB of free space is no longer typical for a service in 2000.
As an example of a site for storing files for everyone, it is more appropriate to consider the FreeDiskSpace site, since it just sets the bar for the average level of service for this area, is no longer clearly associated with fans of the Apple platform, and has a typical service agreement.
By its definition, FreeDiskSpace.com provides a file storage service that can be accessed anytime, anywhere, 24/7 worldwide 1 .
The name of the site itself implies that FreeDiskSpace.com provides a free service that allows consumers (using the tools provided) to transfer, download, store and organize their files on a secure virtual hard drive. These services are provided, in the language of programmers, “as is” - the user agrees that he and only he is responsible for the protection of his records, and the service provider is not responsible for possible damage to either the user or others.
The registered user is given a quota of 50 to 300 MB and warned that, like any free service, such a service can be terminated unilaterally.
Tens of millions of people store their email, bookmarks, and diary on remote servers on the Internet. Now comes the time to store multi-megabyte archives on the web.
However, for journalists this is simply a necessary service: come on a business trip, for example, to the InternetWorld exhibition, take pictures with a digital camera, upload the necessary data to the Internet from the hotel, ask the editors to download it and put it urgently in the room before the author returns home. In this case, we can talk about a series of megabyte photographs of printing quality (freed from the memory of a digital camera), which cannot be sent, for example, through the free mail of Usa.net.
Either way, "in the 21st century, transporting valuable documents and information in a suitcase is going to be crazy," said Spencer Reiss, an analyst at GilderGroup. "The proper place for sensitive data is in a skyscraper somewhere, guarded by guys in white jackets."
Let's hope that Johnny Mnemonic 2 is not really needed to transport a large amount of secret data. Moreover, this hero of William Gibson’s science fiction story carried hundreds of megabytes of information in his head, loaded there in the “idiot-know-it-all” mode - a volume approximately equal to what, for example, Xoom.com Media Sharehouse can provide for free today.
True, now it is still possible to get hold of hundreds of megabytes of space: most providers offer free space with a capacity of 15-20 MB to begin with, the most typical - MyMp3storage.com, FreeDrive and Freediskspace.com give 50 MB, and 100, 300 and 500 MB of disk space Free memory rentals are still a rarity. But the security of these drives is higher than in a laptop, which can be stolen or dropped from a great height.
In addition, some providers may offer encryption services for your files on remote storage for an additional fee - Johnny Mnemonic may not be needed for this reason, among other reasons.
Let's summarize the preliminary results. The inherently fraudulent idea of a network computer quickly fizzled out. But the very next year a new concept for online business arose and was implemented. The idea is to attract a large number of consumers with a useful free file storage service on the Internet and then sell advertising, sponsorship or additional paid services such as data protection or additional disk space.
Over the past year and a half, the leading companies in this area have received investments (sometimes more than once) and are now worth 18-45 million dollars. In total, approximately twenty companies provide this service (and all its leaders are listed at the end of this article).
Already, free storage sites have taught hundreds of thousands of consumers in dozens of countries to use them.
The pioneer of this business was the former Atrieva Corp., now Driveway. According to the Internet principle (with good accuracy) of “first in, first in,” Driveway.com still remains the most multi-user free file storage - it has more than 2 million registered members. Upon registration, each of them automatically receives 25 MB of free space there.
The origins of the companies that occupy this niche were many of the pioneers of other free services. For example, the founders of Desktop.com, Katie Bourke and Larry Drebes, were one of the creators of the free email system RocketMail and the founders of the online people search system - Four11. Just shortly after Four11 was purchased by Yahoo! in October 1997! , Katie and Larry decided to start a new business and founded the website and company Desktop.com. Their goal was to create a new interactive resource for consumers and an infrastructure for web application developers. And now Desktop.com provides not only file storage and bookmarking services, but also quite powerful web applications. They are interactive, multimedia and do not require any prior installation.
To make it clear what I’m talking about, I’ll give a tiny example from my personal life.
When a pen pal from another city came to see me for the first time, the first thing he did in order to better introduce himself was stick a homemade CD-R into my computer, on which I could watch his numerous photographs of sunsets accompanied by specially selected music. If my friend were a member of Desktop.com, he could put his disk on the Internet and send me its address. That is, some areas of the storage can be made available to the outside world, but not as an HTML page, but as a multimedia site with its own interface and a player for WAV or MP3 music files. Any developer can make his work available to an audience of several friends or to all consumers of the Desktop.com service. According to its own definition, Desktop.com is "the first platform to redefine the Web, powered by thousands of people."
The first, but not the only one.
Myplay is a new service that provides an easy way to store, organize, download and play MP3 and other digital music files from Internet users' music libraries. Due to the increased danger of ties with countries that are quite indifferent to international copyright rules and the use of intellectual property, registration is fundamentally denied to residents of several “renegade states” - Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan and Syria. Everyone else is told: "Welcome to myplay."
As stated, Driveway.com has over 2 million members, which is about four times more than any other site in its niche. But according to PC Data , the largest company in the world providing such a service is X:drive. This privately held company, founded in early 1999, transforms the visible Internet into a virtual hard disk. That is, X:drive connects people to the Network “seamlessly” and with the help of its programs you can manipulate remote files and folders as if they were saved on the internal hard drive.
Among the founders of X:drive is David Bonett, the founder of the unforgettable GeoCities.
Before December 1, 1999, My Docs Online was one of many file storage services (with a mere 20MB quota). But since that date, My Docs Online has pioneered a new generation of web-based file storage services that use the emerging Internet protocol WebDAV 3 . The significance of this event, at first glance, is difficult to appreciate. But additional conveniences, to one degree or another, implemented in FTP clients for Windows (drag and drop folders using the “drag and drop” method between the local disk and the server, synchronizing files on the local disk and the server and joint work on it with access control) have now been announced private technologies. And such functions based on WebDAV are becoming standard. They currently only work in MS Internet Explorer 5.5 and in MS Word 2000, Excel 2000 and PowerPoint 2000 ("Save to the Web" option). And now - in My Docs Online.
Smoothly approaching the epilogue, I would like to rely on a lengthy quote from the book by Viktor Erofeev: “Chekhov remains one of the darkest writers of Russian literature. His secret is that he suited everyone.”
Indeed, free file storage is one of the darkest businesses for a Russian entrepreneur (I wouldn’t be surprised if I am a pioneer in covering this topic in the Russian-language press). But the main thing is that this service suits everyone. It is beneficial to providers, since users who pay hourly spend more time on the line. It benefits mobile users (no comments). And it is beneficial for Microsoft, which links the success of its desktop applications with the success of network applications for online organizers, file storage , etc. The only thing is that Microsoft has not yet been able to organize such services based on Hotmail, as Bill Gates promised.
File storages are not profitable except in Russia: our telephone network, which was not even designed for universal dial-up, is probably not capable of this yet.
The launch by German Klimenko of a website for storing user bookmarks and the opening by Alexey Krivenkov of an online organizer are the first signs of the expansion of free services on the Russian Internet - in the right direction from the already banal free service for storing mailboxes and web pages. But there are no traditional free file storage services in the .ru domain yet.
Related links:
Notes:
1 24/7 worldwide - "24 hours a day/7 days a week around the world." In recent years, on the American Internet, these words have been worn out like a proverb when advertising electronic stores and are currently used in just such a short spelling without explanation.
2 Johnny Mnemonic is a character created by William Gibson in the science fiction story of the same name (1981), and later in the film (1995). The Russian translation of the story (http://www.lib.ru/GIBSON/johnmnem.txt) is available in the Moshkov Library.
3 WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is an Internet protocol that runs on top of HHTP. See its description on the official WebDAV Working Groups website (http://www.webdav.org)