

Online Backups Could Use Google’s Expertise - tokenadult
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/online-backups-could-use-googles-expertise/

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mattmcknight
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.

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

~~~
mattmcknight
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.

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jotto
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?

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chaosmachine
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.

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

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tjstankus
I commented over on nytimes. [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/online-
backups-coul...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/online-backups-
could-use-googles-expertise/#comment-302537) (might still be awaiting
moderation)

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

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tjstankus
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.

~~~
kvs
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?

