Storage full: how Google, Apple, and Microsoft are egging users on to buy personal cloud

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces Apple’s internet storage service, iCloud, during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on May 6, 2011.

Synopsis

E-mails, music, videos, and photographs — they need storage. While enterprises may remain the biggest driver in cloud adoption, individuals, over the next five years, will be a key target segment. As if selling users’ digital selves for ad dollars wasn’t enough, many in Big Tech are intent on making money from their digital shelves, too. Here’s the how and why.

Google introduced Gmail on Fool’s Day in 2004. At the time, many reckoned it was a joke. It obviously wasn’t. You needed to be invited by someone who was already using the service to sign up for it, and soon enough, there was an almighty scramble for invites.The biggest lure over competition, primarily Hotmail and Yahoo!, was storage. Google underlined this differentiator in the press release announcing the launch: “… a free search-based webmail

( Originally published on May 04, 2021 )

BY

May 8, 2021, 02:54 PM IST

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