Today marks the passing of Ubuntu One.
"We are sorry to notify you that we will be shutting down the Ubuntu One file services, effective 1 June 2014.
It is no longer possible to purchase storage or music from the Ubuntu One store. The Ubuntu One file services apps in the Ubuntu, Google, and Apple stores have been removed."
The website goes on to warn users to recover their data before the service is finally deprecated on 31st July 2014: after that date all content will be deleted.
I'm sad but not surprised to see the demise of Canonical's cloud storage offer. However, the reality is that hosting everybody's data for free is an expensive business and Canonical just didn't generate enough revenue to make the service commercially viable.
That said, I've a healthy distrust of cloud computing in general and the proclivity of corporations to collect personal data on their customers in particular, so the recent news that ebay had been hacked did nothing to assuage my fears about our headlong rush to disseminate our personal details and store them online.
I carry a (relatively) recent encrypted backup of all my data wherever I go. All I need to access it is a pc running Linux and encfs installed. At a push, I could even access it using a Live Disk and a Windows PC! Our data is our responsibility: if we hand it over every time a website demands that we do, it's no use whinging when they loose it.
Sources & References:
- Ubuntu One: shutdown
- Canonical Blog: Shutting Down Ubuntu One File Services
- The Register: EBay, you keep using the word 'SECURITY'. I do not think it means what you think it means
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