Though I remain pleased that Mike profiled us (it drove some traffic to us), ‘Online storage providers’ is a misnomer as applied to Freepository. We provide secure, globally accessible workspaces in which software developers may quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively collaborate, using the IDE of their choice. As a by-product of that, we happen to provide online storage of those artifacts. As I say above, ‘version control is the key’.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about Amazon S3 and Google Drive (GD). I want to make clear that Freepository’s model is not threatened by these services in any way, and in fact we welcome S3 as a very interesting storage infrastructure. We wouldn’t be surprised to see some really cool mashups that use GD, and wonder how much storage (and for how long) they’ll provide free of charge.

Companies whose models are based upon the singular provision of ‘online storage’ (such as Box, Omnidrive etc.) have received some serious competition. It doesn’t matter that S3 is “…only an API”, or that GD will only provide free storage in “…ad supported views”. As long as a basic level of storage is free, as will almost certainly be the case with GD, someone will create a cool, easy to use plugin or widget that lets the average user consume this disk space as effortlessly as dragging & dropping onto a folder icon. And they will give this widget away.

The business model for online storage will be (and perhaps already is) forever changed. Disk space is a means to an end for Google – they want more channels for ad delivery. Amazon notes that their service is simply an extension of existing web services they’ve provided to developers for years. It can’t have been an after-thought that this extension represents a new revenue stream, though.

Amazon is targeting emerging companies, that as part of their primary offering to their customers, happen to provide online storage. Like flickr, riya and all the other similar services. S3 can be positioned as just another backend service, replacing the myriad line item costs currently associated with providing the actual storage (servers, disks, hubs, balancers, etc.) with a single, easy to understand cost. This effectively commoditizes online storage in the same way that long distance service was commoditized in the mid 1980′s. Amazon has created a key piece of the computing-utility platform.

The 800 lb. gorilla(s) has arrived.