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When Google started supporting Gigs of storage for their Gmail service, it was a huge revolution. It was even amazing to see that the amount of storage per user kept increasing in real time. But now, having 7GB of online storage in Gmail and Google Docs doesn’t seem much anymore.

I think I now have nearly 100GB of online storage, for free. 50GB for Box, about 6GB for SugarSync, 2GB for Dropbox, 25GB for Microsoft’s SkyDrive, and 2GB with Apple’s iCloud. Oh, and of course Google Docs lets you store around 7GB of any document type you want. So, 92GB for free.

Which one is the best? Well, the most convenient is Dropbox due to its synchronization software (iCloud is a close second, but is Mac-only for sync). The biggest is actually SkyDrive, since Box’s 50GB was due to a promotion (Box’s is normally 5GB). SugarSync is right in the middle, offering both cross-platform sync and more storage and sharing options than Dropbox, but the UI is quite clunky. So I guess they all win in a way, and since they’re all free I don’t mind much.

Now, all of these have weird limitations, from maximum file sizes (10MB, 25MB…), bandwidth throughput limitations (slow downloads, essentially), and so on. But if you usually encrypt and then split your files, then it’s a fine way to back up in safe place some documents. Because you do encrypt all the files you place there, right?

Published on February 24, 2012 at 16:57 EST

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