Cubby Is Like Dropbox... If Dropbox Also Had Free, Unlimited Syncing

Anything that doesn't require you to submit to centralized storage under third party control (euphemistically known as "the cloud") has a shot at dethroning Dropbox.

Especially outside the US, where people, governments and businesses are becoming increasingly weary of having their data stored where US government agencies can get access with little to no legal process.

When companies start using "not stored in the US" as a selling point for their services you have a serious problem.

Cubby does appear to have an iOS(http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cubby-app/id512952416?mt=8 ) and Android(https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.logmein.cu... ) client.

> And only Windows and MacOSX support, unlike dropbox's: Windows, MacOSX, Linux, iOS, Android and Blackberry.

Supporting various platforms takes time but it's not that difficult. It's just milestones on a long roadmap that takes time and resources. In the long-term, products compete on many different grounds but cross-platform support is rarely the key.

Last I checked Dropbox's android support was just an app version of the website with no syncing. That barely counts. The desktop/server linux support is pretty good though.

I was thinking the same thing. Then, if you recall, when they were acquired the "5GB of cloud storage" feature was exactly what Microsoft added and called it "Live Sync." Then they merged it with Mesh, killed Mesh, and called the merge "Live Sync." Then they killed all of it and started pushing SkyDrive.

And now SkyDrive is news. And this solution, which is the same as the old solution Microsoft had, is also news. Somehow.

At the very least Cubby benefits from a mature infrastructure that LogMeIn sits on. From what I've read they have numerous geo-balanced (akamized) data enters, each with multiple levels of redundancy and overlay routing, i.e. the whole nine yards. Also being a publicly traded company makes them more accountable and well-behaved.

On the other hand AeroFS appears to be an extension of an offline/LAN utility to the cloud, whereby Cubby is the other way around. They had the client-server setup with p2p connectivity and extended it to the LAN context.

Yeah, you are of course (and unfortunately) right - we've been eerily quiet as of late.

The short of it is: We've been quietly working on a major overhaul of many internal components (improvements to the networking stack, syncing stack, and the way sharing is done). Unfortunately some of the changes are so fundamental that we're not able to do our usual continuous deployment and push the changes incrementally. Instead, we'll be having a major release sometime in the (near? :) future which should provide dramatic improvements. We've been using the new client internally for a few weeks now and so far we love it. I hope you do too (I know, I know, once it's out!)

I usually try and engage actively with the community, but for the past few months I've also been very busy recruiting and building out our team (http://www.aerofs.com/careers.pdf -- we are still hiring!), so my own communication with the external world has been limited. We're working on addressing this as well :)

Isn't this basically DropBox (2GB + referral free spacce), and the 5GB you get for free on this new Cubby service? With both you pay more for the space you use as it syncs across devices as they are on...

I guess you're asking for this functionality as part of the free service, moving things through server-side as they sync?

There were 100 cloud drives before Dropbox, now there are 1000, but still I don't see any exodus from Dropbox.

The more competitors Dropbox gets, the more fragmented the whole thing becomes, which in that sense helps Dropbox. I look at Cubby and think "not another cloud storage", there's no point for me even if it's "better" because I'd have to convince everyone I work with to use it. I'm already sharing various folders with other people on Dropbox, the switching cost is large and only GDrive looks like a true contender as something that many people will end up using or at least will bother to install if I need to share something with them.

I tried it and liked it, but the lack of an automatically public folder with URLs I can type from memory was a deal-breaker.

Do you know how the non-cloud aka computer-to-computer syncing done? Particularly, is the data cached in some intermediate server? I love the idea and would use it if the answer to the above question is No!

I agree. I like to pay Dropbox because in doing that I know what I am getting. I know they aren't selling my data, or my privacy because I actually know what I am purchasing. I am giving my money over to them for a service they offer. "Free, unlimited" is just something that I have a few concerns with. The first, would be that I have no idea how they make their money (probably advertisement?), but if not they are perhaps selling your data or privacy to third parties. Of course, there is an option that it is run by someone with just so much money that they don't mind giving it all away for free. But that is very rare. The second concern I have is how long can a free and unlimited service stay up. This is why I have moved my stuff out of Bitcasa after testing it, even though after an SSH I realized I had over 300 Terabytes to store items. I just can't justify those sorts of things though in my own sense. So yeah, I agree spidey-senses be a tinglin'.

Based on little I'm thinking "it's Skype, but for data" where the service is driven by free point-to-point file transfer, but related buffering/storage or other "hey that's great but I'd pay for..." services tacked on (like Skype's X-to-phone paid services - dirt cheap, but cumulative).

It is free and unlimited to the extent that your bandwidth is free and unlimited. Cubby is basically just a program that transfers files from one computer to another; it doesn't need to use the Cubby servers for that. 5gb of online cloud storage is also provided, but additional storage beyond that is not free or unlimited.

in the twothousandzero years i read "free, unlimited" and thought "sounds like an awesome deal"

now i read "free, unlimited" and i think "not worth trying, will be gone soon"

strange how perceptions change over time

Did you or your repliers actually read the OP's link?

The cloud storage is not unlimited.

Windows Mesh had a bad habit of locking files unnecessarily when I was working with them, which got in my way and I had to get rid of it. Mesh sounded better on paper.