Rakuten launches cloud storage with unlimited file transfers, targets businesses and individuals, with free 10GB storage
techradar.com
Highlights:
- Rakuten Drive offers free 10GB storage and unlimited file transfers, unlike competitors.
- Integrates with Microsoft 365 for document viewing and editing.
- Targets both individuals and businesses with separate plans.
- Paid "PRO" version increases storage to 1TB, allows bigger file uploads, and extends transfer link expiration.
- Future integration with Rakuten's loyalty program planned.
Looking into my crystal ball...
I give this 2-3 months before file transfers are limited due to multi-terrabyte daily transfers from accounts hosting pirated media.
...or just due to plain old corporate greed enshittification.
Nah, that will come 3 months later when to keep providing a world class service they will have to discontinue the free accounts.
But don't worry, they will give existing customers great upgrade deals.
I am inclined to think the privacy protections on this would be awful.
Encrypt everything before uploading it.
For 10 GB of storage? Meh. It feels like setting this up would be a headache unless someone really needed it for something iffy. Itβs so tiny.
1TB for $8/month isn't bad. Cheaper than Google anyway.Never mind, it's actually more expensive than Google and others. See below.I'd rather go for something with E2EE anyway.
Hetzner Storagebox is $3.5/M for 1TB
What are you basing that off of??
Google is 2TB for $10/month.
$8.33/month with the annual plan.
This says $20/month. https://one.google.com/about/plans
Is there a cheaper drive-only option?
The page you linked shows an annual plan of 100$ for 2 TB which means 8.33 per month.
Doh, I misread. I saw $20 and thought that was the monthly price, but that's actually for 2 months, before annual discount. Never mind.
So...yeah, who is Rakuten trying to compete with?
Cryptomator is free and about as easy as encryption comes.
For a while, until they don't.
10 Gigabytes! That are almost two 4K movies with heavy compression.
is* not are
/s (also i wanna appreciate the grammer nerds who motivated me to make this comment ).
Oh, boy! As an American consumer, I'm even more perplexed what the hell they are.
Like 15 years ago, Rakuten seemed to be a normal ecommerce site. I think they bought buy.com or something to get a foothold in the US market. Then they pivoted to being some sort of cashback referral service.
I'm not really sure why that would lead customers to think "yeah, I want cloud storage from the people who made a weird janky digital simulation of the Piggly Wiggly Value Club Card!"
(AWS made it work because they could say "we have the infrastructure to host one of the busiest sites on earth, it's good enough for you", but Rakuten does not have that credibility in the US)
SaaSS (service as a software substitute) bullshit
Businesses should host their own servers.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html
Speedrunning Dropbox, box.com, ....
Who is this even for? 10 gigs is a rounding era in drive space.
People aren't storing massive amounts of data on cloud storage. For text document storage or even a moderate number of images, 10 GB is enough for many people.
Rakuten are the ones who make Kobo, a Kindle competitor that's more popular outside of the US - I have a Kobo.
Likely this is to eventually integrate into their Kobo device offerings, to let you upload your own .epubs (as opposed to Amazon .mobi). 10GB may be small fish for everything else but for ebook storage it's more than you'd ever need.
Ah makes sense
If they support webdav then it means free 10gb swap "ram"
For personal backups I can recommend Jottacloud, although they only have servers in Norway.
Is it 10 Gigabyte or Terabyte?
I have literally never heard of this company before and it sounds like particularly unsubtle Indian scammers
Headline:
Yeah but I can't be bothered to google it so it must be a scam.
They have a whole bunch of purchases, the one I'm familiar with is Kobo years ago
They took over a UK company called Play.com that was big in the 2010s for cheap CD purchases.
Play.com was the shit.
I get it, you don't watch football/soccer.