The world of free hosting, data backups and storage has taken yet another blow as it shows more signs of a dying trend.
Companies such as AOL (Xdrive & AOL Pictures), Hewlett-Packard (Upline), Yahoo (Briefcase), & Sony (Image Station)..have recently closed their doors to these services as the costs were not justifiable.
Experts say that it costs these online companies about $100 a month per 1TB (Terabyte) of data managed, and due to growing competition from online services such as Flikr & Photobucket, they can no longer achieve the balance they need to keep up.
Today’s current economy shows too many budget cuts for online advertising, which assists in the elimination of these types of free services. Because of this, the growing demand for online real estate is too much for these companies to simply give it away for free in the hope that the revenue earned from on-page advertisements, would cover the tab.
Other services such as Kodak Gallery have been forced to rethink the way they operate, by either charging for their service, or placing limitations on the word “free”.
“For Kodak it comes down to keeping the 5 million customers who are willing to pay for a service and recognizing that the other 70 million that pay nothing aren’t worth as much,” Park Associates’ Scherf says. By keeping loyal customers over freeloaders, these companies increase the average revenue per user and reduce overhead costs. (Yahoo News)
Kodak (as well as other companies) recommend that everyone who uses such services, always keep a local backup of their information. When you take advantage of these services, you are not guaranteed that your information will always be there, and the companies themselves are not responsible for any data lost.
Author: Ryan Sanders (Poc Network)
