Upthere raises $77M to put a new spin on personal cloud storage
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
That being said, it's not a terrible idea for a certain customer base. I am disappointed at the apparent lack of first class security features though. That would be a differentiator. But I haven't looked hard... maybe they are below the fold. They talk about securing their platform but not about how I might secure my data.
Edit: why do none of the big cloud drive and sync providers offer basic symmetric local encryption of data? This is easier to implement by far than sync and I for one would pay for this.
I guess I can see this working in the corporate environment where the client machines will always be connected to the internet, and will really only be used for web browsing, word, excel, and ppt (a few 10s of gigs), but I'm very doubtful on its ability to penetrate the personal market. Personally I have absolutely no reason to spread my 100s of gigs of docs, music, and photos across yet another set of servers...and pay a yearly fee for the convenience of having a slightly thinner laptop and not having to plugin my time machine backup every week while opening myself up to trusting another third party service?
> Why do none of the big cloud providers offer local encryption?
- They want to police your files
- Free services typically monetize you through data mining your files (eg. Google Drive)
- It's difficult (not impossible) to build in usability features that might need to access, scan or manipulate your file data, when you don't have access to the file data server-side in the cloud (everything has to be pulled down locally first which adds overhead).
- Browser support for local HTML5 saveAs() etc. handling is still all over the map (Safari is almost a showstopper).
- Easy account recovery options are limited
The tech is getting better though, and there's certainly a number of good options in terms of cloud storage with local encryption built in, including Sync!
Do you have a source that Google drive is mining my files? Free vs paid vs business?
Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.
> As with Google Docs previously, we do not target ads to you based on the content of your files. Our servers index the files you put into Drive in order to provide features like fast search, virus detection and optical character recognition.
The binding TOS explicitly states they may analyze your content, and the analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, AND when it is stored.
If what the community manager says is true, it would be awesome if Google actually updated the TOS to clarify that file AND file meta data in Google Drive are exempt. I mean I love my Chromebook, and it came with 100 GB of Google Drive free. But I have no idea how much access Google has to the files, so I can only assume the TOS is accurate.
==
There's many choice quotes from Google employees that contradict, skirt around or gloss over these issues:
Are files stored on Google Drive Encrypted?
You'll note the first response doesn't answer the question. Then finally a contradicting response:
That's a valid question. Google Drive does NOT currently encrypt files on the server. Our team and our company take the security and privacy of our users very seriously.
https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/drive/6AdrOutSoFU/sgi...
==
Here's a funny conversation regarding web search history being on by default across all your devices:
I can't believe that this option is enabled by default! Clearly it should be DISabled by default if Google cares at all about their users' security and privacy. It's one thing that Google collects anonymous data about what people search for and do online, but to collect a database of detailed personally identifiable information on an opt-out instead of an opt-in basis?
The product manager isn't quite sure either:
I'm a PM at Google working on Personalized Search / Web History ... We've found that it is difficult to articulate the usefulness of having Web History turned on without trying it out for yourself.
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/websearch/12cW5...
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Have you tried contacting google to get confirmation?
Many people (eg. http://www.inc.com/larry-kim/5-online-privacy-tips-from-edwa...) have asked Google to clarify their policy in this regard, but the "generic" TOS you agreed to is the best they could come up with. The trouble with using soft language is that anything goes.
Data monetization goes way beyond serving relevant ads.
While companies like Sync.com encrypt your data end-to-end (making this a non-issue - shameless plug I know - you should check us out though), if you do continue to use Google Drive you may want to investigate third-party Google Drive encryption software such as https://www.boxcryptor.com/en (I hate to recommend a competitor, but it's better than nothing).
I'm making a strong statement, because I value my privacy.
I think perhaps there's a misunderstanding here. I'm less concerned with your point of "google might be reading my files", that's a perfectly valid concern. That's different to making the statement "google are monetising your files, so pay for my service instead".
> I'm making a strong statement, because I value my privacy.
You are making a strong statement about a competitor that I'm not sure you can back up. That is not the same as valuing your own privacy. Not using google drive because you aren't sure what they're doing is fine.
However, it's interesting to note that Google mentions that they are willing to negotiate the terms of service for businesses using the paid Apps service: note that additional terms may apply for negotiated Google Apps agreements.
https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2450387?hl=en
In the case of HIPAA compliance for healthcare, or data privacy compliance requirements for industries that store files with personally identifiable information (PII) in the cloud, I wonder if Google would amend the TOS to include server-side encryption, or other safeguards, which would mitigate the issue.
This is something I will investigate further, as I'm not sure what the answer is.
Regardless of what a Google Product Manager states (marketing rhetoric or current policy), Google's legally binding terms of service are the only terms that matter at the end of the day:
Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.
It would be great if Google updated their terms to be clearer. In the mean time I'll take their word on it.
If you had a Linux client we would consider using this for a lot of things.
Given we're on the brink of putting an extra terabyte or two into your phone or tablet etc I think cloud storage is really going to boil down to allowing others' access.
$280 with separate drives - https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DS416slim-NAS-DiskStation/dp...
One very cool part is it has sync software that can automatically sync all or some of your stuff - one way or bidirectional - to dropbox, google drive, backblaze, amazon glacier etc for backups and public access.
There's a fork of their software here to install on other devices too - https://xpenology.me
It's not a fork so much as a custom bootloader for Synology's version of Linux.
Here's the official forum: http://xpenology.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2
It is very cheap storage, it is connected to the internet, it has some nice phone applications that I can use to access my content, I can run scripts on it to back up data from other services like Instagram, it is available on all of my computers.
If I am ever to get sucked into another cloud storage, give me encryption, open source client, mobile apps, connection to other services to backup my content, API access to my data, openness to third parties building connections with your platform and I will chase you to give you my money.
It takes your files off of your computer except for an intelligent local cache. It doesn't integrate with your file system. The creators clearly think storing everything locally and syncing copies to the cloud is over.
I think a lot of techy people fail to realize exactly how little most people rely on their computers for anything other than web services, and how extensively most people rely on their phones for basically everything. None of the offerings you mentioned are really that great with phones.
Based on your use of your own local physical storage server, it's pretty clear that this isn't for you. It isn't for me either. But try putting yourself in someone else's shoes for a change.
I do not care about "it takes your files off of your computer except for an intelligent local cache." What does it mean for me and my photos?
Also, all my photos are uploaded into Dropbox via iPhone anyway...
[1] http://semiaccurate.com/2016/07/25/amd-puts-massive-ssds-gpu...
Why this is better than a syncing approach is not clear to me.
I was hoping the "new spin" would be something a little more radical.
An example: if I have a 320GB local drive and Dropbox keeps all its files on my local drive, I can't store the full 1TB of files in Dropbox that I'm paying for. However, I probably don't need all of those 1TB of files at the same instant, just various subsets which change over time, meaning that a cloud storage solution which doesn't require constant client-server sync lets me actually utilize the full volume of the service.
https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-projec...
On serious note it would be very nice to have a choice in dropbox about what stays locally and what is cloud only. I don't understand those things that well but I suspect it would be relatively easy for them to add that if it's becoming a selling point for the competition.
They must think they have more potential selling points if they are getting 77M.
Competes more with iCloud than Dropbox. Will probably try and get acquired by Apple/Google.
Those two things aside, Dropbox is very poor. They don't have multi-account support. (There is some abomination where you can combine exactly one personal account with one business account, in a frankenmonster hostile user experience.) Their activity logs don't tell you which machine made changes, only which user. The mobile app doesn't sync, but many users think it does. I don't know how competitors differ in these kind of things, but that is because I use Linux.
However, I would not want to build a company around bypassing local storage because when (if?) local storage becomes cheaper on mobile devices, there will be absolutely no benefit of using their product.
Then, as the photos and videos keep getting bigger and bigger due to higher resolution and quality, the bigger problem will be uploading those files to the "cloud" in the first place, not not having enough local storage. Because, compared to local storage, network connectivity for mobile devices will take longer to become mature.
One issue with cheap local storage is the reliability. It is easy to get an external hard disk or NAS box, but quite difficult to setup appropriate backup procedures and maintain those. For example keeping data and backups in one physical location is not a very good idea.
And this cloud service doesn't solve the backup problem either. With Upthere, the copy in their cloud is your only copy. If their data gets corrupted, you lose everything. So, you want a proper remote backup solution anyway whether you use Upthere or Dropbox or Syncthing. And if you think Upthere must have good backup setup of their own, then I'd argue that so would Dropbox and Google Drive.
So, I still am not sure if Upthere really provides that much value.
Outside of Macbooks, though, there's a wide range of available storage options. Outside laptops, even wider. To OP's point, this seems like a limiting factor only until it isn't. If people are feeling the pain from Macbook storage limitations, it's a fair bet that the next iteration will let you go further. And the same applies across the board, including mobile.
That's a pretty big exception. But even on traditional computers, photo/video libraries going back years can take up terabytes. Now with stuff like this (e.g. iCloud Photo Library), you can access that entire history from any device of any size.
And don't forget, it handles offsite backup too.
Furthermore, it has native device OS integration. That means it can handle syncing that cache with the cloud better. It can do it while the device is otherwise alseep, i.e. overnight. Third party apps need a hack to keep the device awake. Notice Upthere has a setting for this called "prevent auto lock" which it recommends enabling for "large" uploads. That's really suboptimal. iCloud is also native to the Photos app. Upthere has to compete with all the library features in Photos too, like all the machine learning stuff that's coming in iOS 10.
Maybe it's somehow better for other documents / as a straight Dropbox or iCloud Drive competitor. Maybe the core tech and team makes them a good acquisition target. But for the "rich media" that takes up the bulk of local storage, it's going to be hard to move the needle as third party app.
I have a question: for me, as a consumer, why would I use Upthere? What is added value?
Both Dropbox and Google Drive work well (even OneDrive personal on mac is ok) - buy maybe I'm missing point here.
What's the difference? Why would you choose a more expensive third-party solution?
Here is upcoming startup and I'm waiting to release its beta to the public: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3aXb5RqS0s
Private, Streams and Just works.