March 6th, 2006
Aaron vs. Goliath (box.net vs. Google's gdrive)
Over the weekend, Garrett Rogers, our resident blogger on everything Google blogged a post about Google’s forthcoming G-Drive project. Said Rogers:
The GDrive service will provide anyone (who trusts Google with their data) a universally accessible network share that spans across computers, operating systems and even devices. Users will no longer require third party applications to emulate this behaviour by abusing Gmail storage.
Knowing that such a service exists already (box.net), I contacted the company’s founder Aaron Levie to get his take on the Goliath’s encroachment onto his turf, not surprisingly, Levie had already blogged about it in a post entitled "Beating Google:"
That is pretty exciting. Imagine being able to offload all of your data to the internet, where you could then access it from anywhere at anytime. Or, even better, you can synchronize your files to your webdrive so that in an emergency you will have a backup copy available. Sounds appealing, no? The only thing is… Box.net does that!…..All I can really say is, we’re prepared for the challenge, and understand that there is bumpy road ahead of us. What else could make this business more interesting than competition from Google? Ok enough with the G word.
Box.net offers 1GB of online storage for free and 5GB for $5/month. Of course, if those Y- or M-word folks want to get in Google’s face before Google launches, they know who to call. If I had to place my bets, it would be on Yahoo. Via acquisition, the company has been amassing a very large portfolio of API-enabled services.
Related: Consumer Web Apps: Road kill or the road to success
