Comments on: How about this fight card? Dell vs. Google vs. Microsoft vs. Apple

Dell is thinking about ways to bring cloud-based consumer storage to the mainstream. By the way, so are Microsoft, Google and Apple.

[paranoid.one]

Should be a great battle - the big guys have not fared well, with the notable exception of EMC acquiring Mozy. Others, like the AOL-Xdrive fiasco and HP's Upline, have tanked for a variety of reasons (Xdrive because AOL insisted they make it a media property - bad idea, and Upline because HP bought a tech that didn't really work and then put a shiny interface on it - bad plan).

There are a few companies out there doing good things - Box.net is sort of like the Xdrive of old, ElephantDrive uses Amazon S3 along with their own storage (and I heard from an exec there also uses EqualLogic - Dell relationship?), and Carbonite is sort of like Mozy for consumers.

Who else could/should be in the space? Sony? McAfee?

[juana10]

until gdrive is here i use a tiny freeware for my backups (that has already saved me a couple of times) the way it works is that i right click a file and backup it, so usually on a daily basis i do changes to a couple of documents etc, so every time i want to backup every couple of hours, just for safety i right click that file and backup it to my mail takes a second... :) its home page is http://backup2e.com

[AppleSuxLeo]

Apple`s cloud rained out already. You can`t trust Apple with anything cloud-based. They are only adept at cranking out iPods made by Chnese prison labor.

[dude7895]

I'm still surprised anyone actually buys those overpriced pieces of crap.

[ejeon1989]

I don't think Dell will ever really succeed in the Cloud Computing arena because their focus is mostly on hardware (and shoddy hardware at that!). Apple showed us how NOT to get into cloud computing with MobileMe (I still prefer .mac). Microsoft and Google on the other hand, will probably come up with some interesting ideas on this area because Microsoft and Google are chiefly software companies. if I was to choose a winner, I'd pick Google just because they can do online things a little bit better than Microsoft can. However, Microsoft does have strong offerings with their Windows Live suite. i personally use Live Mail, SkyDrive, and Live Mesh (although it's still technically in beta) everyday on campus. I like Microsoft's tight integration with the Windows Live accounts over Google's right now.