A decade ago Google launched its webmail service and jaws dropped when they claimed that you would never have to delete an email with its 1GB inbox allowance. How could they afford to give away so much storage for free? This led to some creative use from Google customers – saving attachments as drafts and sending emails to yourself became the precursor to free cloud storage tools, of which Google now has its own.
1GB for free has turned into 15GB. Pretty good, but somehow lacking in the wow factor that Google Mail delivered – I guess even Google can’t give everything away for ‘free.’
What will make you sit up and take notice is when you look at the price list, recently announced, for topping up that storage. Less than $10 a month will buy you a terabyte – less than $100 a month will get you more space than you will ever need – 10 terabytes or more. That’s 10,000 times more than that magic 1GB figure that seemed so amazing all those years ago.
What can we learn from this?
With this move Google has finally, and completely, commoditized cloud storage, much in the way that it commoditized email services back in the day. Does anyone else see this as a case of selling ice cream to eskimos or charging people for breathing air? The value of online storage is in the trust and security Cloud storage presents, not in our saving another Googleplex of our own personal data on a server only to be sold unwanted products. Who is really interested in being dragged down into this net experience?
Well, it’s worthless to try and compete with Google on price. Even if some providers think they can match this, remember that Google is playing a different game than you. You are selling an honest service with a price, Google is making the user the product, exploiting the data reaped from the service provided. Also, Google has a huge war chest and almost unrivalled infrastructure that means it can keep driving down prices.
As service providers found out the hard way with email, not offering valued, easy to use services will mean that you will lose out to OTT providers such as Google. Many providers are only just catching up now with products that can match OTT offerings that offer people good user experiences. Almost as many gave up altogether and simply offered branded services from Google, Yahoo and others – accelerating loss of brand value and ultimately: losing customer mindshare. This is a battle you will lose every time.
So play by your own rules:
Cloud storage is the next battle ground, and it’s not too late to claim a share of the action. While you can’t compete on price, you can compete on trust, features, usability and service. Google can offer many things, but it wants you to operate in its ecosystem and by its rules. But customers want storage that works on their own terms – not on Google’s.
OX Drive allows service providers to do just that. It’s a white label ready Cloud storage and sync solution that enables rapid roll-out of a branded cloud storage to your customers. This in turn, allows them to work and share files the way that they want. Throw in OX Documents, OX Mail, and soon real time communications and crypto to make it a sweet App Suite.
Not many really need 10TB of storage – what they want is ease of use and privacy. The time is now to offer a truly honest solution that openly trades on value and not on non-transparent exploitation models.