The contention of foreign mainstream cloud storage service

Beijing Time August 31 news, perhaps, one day you will tell your children about cloud computing before the Digital life: how you can store photos, documents and music to the U disk, and then the U disk from one device to another device. This is what the industry says about "manual transfer Networks" (Sneakernet), and cloud storage services are bound to make such a life a reality.

At present, the foreign cloud storage services mainly include the following 6:

Google Drive

Free Storage: 5 GB

Paid service: $2.49 per month for GB storage and $50 per month for upgrades to 1,000 GB. Gmail users who participate in the paid storage service can automatically receive GB of mailbox storage space.

Compatible platforms: PC, Mac, Chrome os,android, IOS

Amazon Cloud Drive

Free Storage: 5 GB

Paid services: Less than 2 dollars a month to obtain GB of storage space, less than 80 dollars per month to upgrade to 1,000 GB. The free service provides 1,000 copies of the music file storage space and the paid service does not limit the amount of MP3 storage.

Compatible platforms: PC, Mac, Android (music files only)

Box

Free space: 5 GB, storage file limit within MB

Paid Service: $9.99 per month for GB storage, $19.99 per month for GB storage, both services limit storage files to 1 GB.

Compatible platforms: PC, Mac, IOS, Android, BlackBerry

Dropbox

Free Storage: 2 GB

Paid service: 9.99 dollars a month to get GB of storage space, 19.99 dollars a month to get GB of storage space.

Compatible platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, IOS, Android, BlackBerry

Apple ICloud

Free Storage: 5 GB

Paid service: 20 dollars a year to get GB of storage space, 100 dollars a year to get GB of storage space.

Compatible platforms: PC, MAC, IOS

Microsoft SkyDrive

Free Storage: 7 GB

Paid service: 10 dollars a year to get GB of storage space, 50 dollars a year to get GB of storage space.

Compatible platforms: PC, Mac, IOS, Windows phone,android

Market situation

Although the types of services are basically the same, they serve a somewhat different direction. For example, box is primarily for enterprise users, not individual users, so the real competitor for box should be SharePoint, and Apple's icloud is for iOS users only.

This April, Google officially launched its own cloud storage services Google Drive. For a while, the industry's battle over cloud storage services began to be hotly discussed. Analysts believe that while Google Drive is targeted at individual users, it provides enough enterprise functionality, including collaboration and file Synchronization Services, and Google Drive is bound to be welcomed by corporate users.

"Microsoft is certainly most interested in bringing seamless data transfer services to as many Windows devices as possible, and Apple also wants to keep the iphone, Mac and Apple TV synchronized," said Allon Levi, a co-founder of cloud storage service box, Levie. Google, in addition to its core search business, has always wanted to be the information Center for its customers. ”

But these three technologies are trying to build their own vertical integration technology, which means that content storage cannot break through the limitations of the authoring platform. Therefore, it is inevitable that each of the technology companies will bring about a broken and fragmented ecosystem.

In fact, users feel happy and confused about the cloud storage service. Joy is because they can use the free cloud storage services every day, but too much choice is inevitable and confusing, users can hardly find a real service for their own.

According to statistics, the total number of global cloud storage services users has exceeded 500 million, but the cloud storage services have become overly saturated. The cost of cloud storage services for Microsoft, Google and Apple is extremely low, and their main goal is to capture the market as quickly as possible, even at the expense of living beyond its means.

The reason for this is that Apple uses icloud to keep its customers in their ecological environment and buy other Apple hardware and content. Both Google and Microsoft have the same motivations.

The plight of small service providers

To attract more users, cloud storage providers must provide more free storage space. But as storage space increases, users who pay upgrades will be reduced. Some small providers without other sources of income are bound to be unable to afford such a big investment, and they have to look for other sources of revenue.

Small service providers are not just faced with the competition of one company, they have to face all other service providers effectively. They have no profit until they find a new profit model. All free users are wasting their money. This situation is very similar to Yahoo and Google provide free webmail services, although the loss of hundreds of millions of of dollars each year, but they can generate revenue by other means.

Who will be the winner?

Research has found that a good cloud storage service requires the following:

* Support all mobile devices and computers

* Support all content, user generated content and advertising

* Easy to use for mobile devices, safety and privacy

* Users do not need to purchase content from other resources

* Make it easy for users to share content selectively with others and other systems

For cloud storage services, users are actually paying more attention to backup capabilities. The main purpose of user selection is based on storage and backup. Of course, cloud storage service providers need more technical innovation, improve the security and quality of services.