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WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

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Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#21

Post by nicpottier »

ssmoot wrote: post #9
wickedchicken wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a difference between 'unlimited' and 'absurdly high.' Many hosting providers offer 'unlimited' storage but limit how fast you can upload -- this effectively caps their storage but makes it high enough for most users to never care. Instead of dubious 'unlimited' marketing I would prefer up-front pricing. GMail tells you exactly how much storage it offers for free with the idea that this is much too hi…

I've backed up a few hundred GB with Backblaze. I think the implication being made here is unfair. I'm much more likely to believe any issues with my upload were caused by shady AT&T QoS. You know the kind. Goto any speedtest site and somehow you're getting exactly 12MB down, 3MB up, but it never really seems to add up that way anywhere else. Even to my own office, which I know has an extra 100MB to burst, yet someho…

The likely reason Speedtest doesn't add up is because the file you are downloading to test with is hosted by your ISP.

Speedtest was originally made to test the 'last mile', assuming your ISP's connections to the rest of the world is always faster than that. In most cases that is true, but it is possible it isn't in your area.

As a particular clear example of that, here's my little write up on Speedtest.net usage in Rwanda: http://blog.nyaruka.com/stuff-0

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#22

Post by bm98 »

barrkel wrote: post #10
wickedchicken wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a difference between 'unlimited' and 'absurdly high.' Many hosting providers offer 'unlimited' storage but limit how fast you can upload -- this effectively caps their storage but makes it high enough for most users to never care. Instead of dubious 'unlimited' marketing I would prefer up-front pricing. GMail tells you exactly how much storage it offers for free with the idea that this is much too hi…

Explicit pricing is better for moderate users and worse for heavy users. "Unlimited" effectively subsidizes heavy users by overcharging moderate users. As a heavy user, I'm a fan of "unlimited".

It depends. When "Unlimited" service is sold with a Terms of Service that includes an "Excessive Use Policy" like Mozy's [1], the heavy user is operating in an ambiguous zone where continued use of the service at the advertised price is at the whim of the provider.

We've seen this with unlimited data plans with the cable ISPs; they're not really unlimited.

To me, it's similar to having a traditional credit card versus one with no pre-set spending limit. Which would you rather have? The latter has a limit, you just don't know what it is until you hit it.

---

[1] http://mozy.com/terms/ "....excessive use of the Service, which means usage over a given period far exceeds the average level of usage by users of the Service generally..."

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#23

Post by limmeau »

DanLar75 wrote: post #7
marcusEting wrote: post #6

If you are a Dropbox Pro user I think you get the packrat addon, which allows for unlimited history / undeletes. So, while the amount of files you can keep in your DB is limited, the amount of data that DB has to keep up with for you could get very large. I don't see that they have anything to counter this in their model, and it kind of worries me that if people abuse this then they will remove the feature for all us…

I would say that Dropbox (being a really super company with a great product) has issues that are actually even larger than the storage cost. Dropbox is based on Amazon S3, which means that not only do they have storage costs to a 3rd party that are so to speak 'out of their control' but they are also dealing with bandwidth and transaction costs. I wish them all the best, however I can imagine this being quite expensi…

As the Dropbox clients talk to Dropbox servers instead of directly to S3, Dropbox can just transparently migrate their data to a storage facility of their own when they decide that that has become cheaper than S3.

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#24

Post by dexen »

This left me wondering; wouldn't use of deduplication storage backend (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venti) lessen the incremental cost of servicing each new customer?

Couldn't it be well expected that, encrypted data aside, files with same content are often used by more than one persona?

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#25

Post by ovi256 »

dexen wrote: post #24

This left me wondering; wouldn't use of deduplication storage backend (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venti ) lessen the incremental cost of servicing each new customer? Couldn't it be well expected that, encrypted data aside, files with same content are often used by more than one persona?

I'd expect most people use these services for backups of business documents, which are almost guaranteed to be unique.

I seem to recall that Dropbox (or another well known online storage startup) implements this strategy. Maybe it works.

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#27

Post by andybak »

ovi256 wrote: post #25
dexen wrote: post #24

This left me wondering; wouldn't use of deduplication storage backend (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venti ) lessen the incremental cost of servicing each new customer? Couldn't it be well expected that, encrypted data aside, files with same content are often used by more than one persona?

I'd expect most people use these services for backups of business documents, which are almost guaranteed to be unique. I seem to recall that Dropbox (or another well known online storage startup) implements this strategy. Maybe it works.

Which will be tiny.

Videos, audio and photos and game media will take the bulk of the space. Of those - only photos and a proportion of the videos are likely to be totally unique to a user.

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#28

Post by edanm »

andybak wrote: post #27
ovi256 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd expect most people use these services for backups of business documents, which are almost guaranteed to be unique. I seem to recall that Dropbox (or another well known online storage startup) implements this strategy. Maybe it works.

Which will be tiny. Videos, audio and photos and game media will take the bulk of the space. Of those - only photos and a proportion of the videos are likely to be totally unique to a user.

I doubt that's true for Dropbox, at least.

Consider that Dropbox gives you 50gb for the basic plan. I'm guessing most people don't back up videos, games or their OS using that space, but rather back up their documents, projects they're working on in whatever field, photos, and music.

Of those, only with music is there a chance to use deduplication, and that's assuming you can figure out two music files with different ID-tags are the same.

(Come to think of it, in my Dropbox, music easily takes up 70% of my quota, so maybe is is worthwhile after all.)

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#29

Post by narad »

wvenable wrote: post #15
darrenkopp wrote: post #11

I had about 50GB of backed up data with mozy for that last 3 years, growing from ~20GB when i started. I've been paying $5 per month for almost 3 years now, which means I have paid ~50 a year (very rough to take out transaction fees and bandwidth fees, etc). That should buy them at least 320GB of average sata disk drives per year (assuming all money going into storage). This means for "unlimited" they can recoup 6x t…

I'd stick with mozy, but 50GB is too small. I have about 89GB in Mozy right now and if I could get that for the $5 per month, I wouldn't go anywhere. Mozy is pretty slow, so backing up even more data isn't very practical. Also, their system doesn't handle large files very well. My 89GB is just pictures, personal movies, documents, and source code.

I have less pictures and data. I am using Google Storage. It costs very less ( $5 per 20GB per Year).

Re: WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?

#30

Post by wlievens »

edanm wrote: post #28
andybak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which will be tiny. Videos, audio and photos and game media will take the bulk of the space. Of those - only photos and a proportion of the videos are likely to be totally unique to a user.

I doubt that's true for Dropbox, at least. Consider that Dropbox gives you 50gb for the basic plan. I'm guessing most people don't back up videos, games or their OS using that space, but rather back up their documents, projects they're working on in whatever field, photos, and music. Of those, only with music is there a chance to use deduplication, and that's assuming you can figure out two music files with different…

You need a decent hash of every file anyway (to check for changes etc) so it's pretty trivial to deduplicate. I don't think you'd need to do stuff like check the ID-tag.
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