Online Backups Could Use Google’s Expertise | Hacker News Reader

Online Backups Could Use Google’s Expertise

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

5 pointstokenadult9 comments

Odd to not mention Amazon S3 in this story. There are plenty of tools out there. Of course, perhaps those don't have marketing budgets. This might be a good place for Amazon to add some of their brand power to those services, and make the signup a little less Byzantine for average users.

S3 is neat and can do thee job, but it's just not a consumer service.

Exactly why I'd like to see Amazon throw a consumer service on top of it. I realize they don't want to crowd out competitors, but the power of their brand could give people a little more confidence than a name like "JungleDisk" does.

I wrote a Gmail and Hotmail backup client for the web that syncs every day to Amazon's S3 via IMAP and POP. After several months of trying to sell it, I can tell you that search advertising isn't working very well. If search advertising doesn't work, does that mean consumers don't understand what they are searching for? Is this market not ready yet?

You're selling a service that backs up Gmail and Hotmail? I suspect very few people even realize this is possible, or even if they do, are concerned enough to pay for backups.

exactly, but the blog post argues that there is a market for this

I commented over on nytimes. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/online-backups-coul... (might still be awaiting moderation)

The gist of my comment is that the issue is not backup services, it's the bandwidth.

Well, since my comment on nytimes.com apparently got moderated out of existence, I retrieved it from my clipboard history. Here it is. (And maybe someone can help me figure out why this would get ditched by the moderator.) Keep in mind this was written for NYT audience, not HN audience.

The problem with online backup is not the lack of existing services. I've tried a few and they each more or less get the job done, with Dropbox and ZumoDrive being exceptional.

The problem is lack of bandwidth in the US. I have a "high speed" internet connection and pay for the "turbo boost" package. Despite the cute marketing terms and the hefty bill, what it boils down to is grossly asymmetrical bandwidth that's piss-poor on the upstream side. At best, I can push 200MB an hour. At that rate it takes about 500 hours to upload 100GB, which is not even that much data in these days of massive photo files, HD movies, etc. I gave up in frustration and went back to external drives.

While other countries, most notably Japan, work to provide fiber connections to the majority of their citizens, we're still partying like it's 1999 here in the US. As a web developer and heavy internet user, I feel strongly that the bandwidth issue is more than just a PITA; it's hurting our economy.

Don't think for a second that Google doesn't know how terrible the user experience is with online backup. They've been buying dark fiber on and off for years. But until that fiber gets to the curb, my guess is that they'd rather not deal with the support issues that would arise from a large-scale consumer-focused online storage system.

Yes, that's exactly the problem.

- There is no upload bandwidth and we still acuiqre most of our backupable data offline (via cameras, HDs, etc.)

- I am sure Chrome OS will make online acquired data backupable in a push button way.

Given these two obvious points, I don't see the reason why that blog post was written. Not to mention they forgot to mention S3, and others you mention.

May be Amazon will make Kindle 3.0 a netbook and compete with Google?

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