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Backblaze S-1 IPO

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Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#221

Post by prirun »

HanaShiratori wrote: post #168
OnlyMortal wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t. But, if it’s a key generated at their end, they could dedupe the original data. S3 bucket encryption been an example. Source: I work in deduplication for a well known company.

Not sure how the keys are generated (I'm not a backblaze user) but since one apparently has to use their software for backup jobs there might be chance that they also store the keys on their servers for this exact purpose... This would definitely limit the inconvenience caused by personal users with huge amounts of data - like op with his 80 TB

It would be very easy to test this by backing up a new Windows machine and monitoring outgoing network transfers. If you can backup an entire newly-installed Windows machine and don't see any significant transfers, it is being deduped.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#222

Post by mkr-hn »

ksec wrote: post #217
ethbr0 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, Apple can charge $1.5 for something everyone else can charge $1 for, but I was looking it from a cost of goods sold perspective, instead of pricing power. If it costs them $1.25, and everyone else can do it for $0.75 because they have scale and capital... that doesn't seem long-term stable. If one cloud provider becomes dominant, Apple loses. If Apple loses market share, they lose negotiation power, and A…

>If one cloud provider becomes dominant, Apple loses. Apple has been basically funding Azure Expansion. Microsoft needed Apple to scale their Cloud business in a multi-year contract. And Apple using Microsoft to drive AWS price down. I think for one reason or another ( politics, strategic, or technical ) they have avoided GCP. Apple also partner with other Cloud Services Provider in different Region. And they are doi…

It's an interesting turn. Microsoft invested $150 million to save Apple long ago, now Apple is investing in Microsoft's services platform as they both try to transition into services companies.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#223

Post by CameronNemo »

vadfa wrote: post #142

For a long time I have wanted to use one of these systems, but I would never upload anything to the cloud unless I encrypted it with an algorithm that I trust like GNU's gpg first. Is there any application, preferably for Windows, that can handle this for me? Synchronise files with a cloud system, but encrypting/decrypting them transparently as they are uploaded/downloaded.

I would try BorgBackup or restic. Both support encryption and compression.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#224

Post by helloworld11 »

mkr-hn wrote: post #214
prirun wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the parent post is about the PC Backblaze backup service, not B2. The PC backup service does backup everything, and part of the reason for that is to make it extremely easy to setup. If they allowed selection of what to backup, it would be another user interface, more documentation, and then if the user deselected something important, they'd be mad if they had a problem and something wasn't backed up. Since i…

You can exclude folders. I use it for a few things where there's no point in backing it up.

As far as I know, Backblaze lets you exclude folders from accessory drives and so forth, but not from the main PC drive itself. Also, the selection by exclusion itself is deeply annoying, because, as I said above, if out of many folders you only want to back up a few, selecting just those would be much easier and more intuitive than deselecting a whole pile of them to only leave a few. This was a deal breaker for me.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#225

Post by helloworld11 »

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #199
helloworld11 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried Backblaze but couldn't get over its insistence on first backing up my entire primary hard drive instead of allowing me to simply choose directly my most important files in my external drives, or from wherever I prefer. Seems arbitrarily forceful to me, though the pricing and security options are good. Also, the interface of deselecting things to not back up via exclusions, instead of simply being able to spec…

This is not accurate. You are not forced to backup your entire hard-drive. There is a 3rd party program called: rclone That program let's you choose which files/directories get copied over to BackBlaze. We have 150+TB (+10TB/week) stored at BackBlaze and I use rclone exclusively to upload our content for backup. Note, it's a CLI program that works on Linux/BSD. I'm not aware of any other platforms that it works on.

Furthermore, in response to the comment above, my reference was to using Backblaze alone and with Windows, as many people without any technical knowledge of computers at all might use it. Having to add in the use of Linux or rclone would mean a very different use case from the usual.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#226

Post by helloworld11 »

prirun wrote: post #213
UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not accurate. You are not forced to backup your entire hard-drive. There is a 3rd party program called: rclone That program let's you choose which files/directories get copied over to BackBlaze. We have 150+TB (+10TB/week) stored at BackBlaze and I use rclone exclusively to upload our content for backup. Note, it's a CLI program that works on Linux/BSD. I'm not aware of any other platforms that it works on.

I think the parent post is about the PC Backblaze backup service, not B2. The PC backup service does backup everything, and part of the reason for that is to make it extremely easy to setup. If they allowed selection of what to backup, it would be another user interface, more documentation, and then if the user deselected something important, they'd be mad if they had a problem and something wasn't backed up. Since i…

Noted, but Backblaze's insistence on "simplicity" by obligating a full main drive backup so that users can't later complain that something was missed is silly. Why not just offer this as a default but also offer the choice of creating your own completely custom backup selections, you know, on the assumption that some users of the service might actually know what they want and how to select it.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#227

Post by mkr-hn »

helloworld11 wrote: post #224
mkr-hn wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can exclude folders. I use it for a few things where there's no point in backing it up.

As far as I know, Backblaze lets you exclude folders from accessory drives and so forth, but not from the main PC drive itself. Also, the selection by exclusion itself is deeply annoying, because, as I said above, if out of many folders you only want to back up a few, selecting just those would be much easier and more intuitive than deselecting a whole pile of them to only leave a few. This was a deal breaker for me.

I definitely have folders excluded on the main drive.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#228

Post by helloworld11 »

michaelt wrote: post #152
helloworld11 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im sorry but how does that work? If the purpose of online backup is for your data to be stored online, why would you need 20TB or 20GB (or any amount) of storage attached to the backed up computer? Backblaze, or any other online backup service stores everything on their storage, elsewhere, and that's exactly the point: that if your entire house burns to the ground with all your computers and external drives etc, you…

What they're trying to say is "Backblaze backs up an unlimited amount from one computer - but you can't back up more data than you have on one computer. So if you have 1234 GB in Backblaze, you must have 1234 GB of disk space" This is in contrast to other cloud storage services which might (for example) allow you to save space on your phone by uploading your old photos to the cloud and deleting the local copies.

Thanks for the clarification!

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#229

Post by rsync »

Spooky23 wrote: post #50
antisthenes wrote: post #27

I'm surprised how small Backblaze is. Am I reading this right that they only had 53 million USD in Revenue in 2020? That's a tiny fraction of, say, Dropbox's revenue. I would have expected them to be in the 30-50% range of Dropbox on size. And with 164 employees to boot, that's only $323,000 revenue per employee. I wonder what the compensation is like there.

Why? It’s a pure commodity business. They are competing against your iCloud subscription and little USB drives that cost $30. Not sure what the long term strategy is, but I hope going public doesn’t kill them — seems like a nice little business that could just coast for years.

"Not sure what the long term strategy is, but I hope going public doesn’t kill them — seems like a nice little business that could just coast for years."

Yes, it does seem just like that and I believe we are witnessing an entity (backblaze, in this case) trying to switch from one zone of attraction:

Nice little business that throws off a ton of cash and grows organically but doesn't make anyone a billionaire ...

... to another zone of attraction ...

Scaled up enterprise that requires a sales and marketing effort (and accompanying infra) capable of revenue generation that matches the demands of an IPO and public shareholders ... and could possibly make someone a billionaire.

There's a big, deadly valley between those two zones of attraction and you have to push very hard to make that change. Very unlikely any kind of corporate culture or "human touches" survive that movement.

" ... seems like a nice little business ..."

Sometimes that's enough for people. Sometimes it's not.

Sometimes you paint yourself into a corner where the (IPO) is the only choice one has.

I wish them the best.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#230

Post by prirun »

ramesh31 wrote: post #86

>"We make it astonishingly easy to store, use, and protect data" What does this even mean? And how is their business even remotely competitive with the big 3? Bit pushing is a volume game, and it doesn't seem like they have much of it.

I'm the author of HashBackup.

What I like about Backblaze B2 is that is has simple, no gimmick pricing, unlike almost every other cloud storage company. It doesn't have delete penalties, where they charge for storage you've deleted. It doesn't have minimum file sizes, where they charge for storage you aren't actually using. It doesn't have a minimum payment every month.

For backups, their business is very competitive with the big 3, especially considering that they will mail a physical drive to you with your data.

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