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AOL Buys Storage Firm Xdrive

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

August 4, 2005, 12:47 PM

AOL on Thursday announced that it had acquired Xdrive, a privately held online storage and backup service for an undisclosed amount. Xdrive will operate as a stand-alone company and remain in its Santa Monica, California headquarters. Now a wholly owned subsidiary, it will fall under AOL's Digital Services unit.

"The digitization of consumer home media is skyrocketing, with consumers and AOL members increasingly looking for easier ways to protect and manage a wide variety of important data files and digital media assets," Hunt said. "Xdrive will further enhance AOL’s consumer storage offerings to deliver a more safe and secure digital lifestyle for our members."

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By jjmalaska

posted Aug 6, 2005 - 12:10 PM

Great. Now i have to go find another on line storage provider. cause i'm not giving my money to frigging aol.

Score: 0

By daniel321

edited Aug 15, 2005 - 9:55 PM

I'm heading to ShadowStorage now that AOL runs Xdrive. ShadowStorage offers 5GB for $9.49/mo so it's in the same ballpark as Xdrive, if not less.

Score: 0

By Pipewrench

posted Aug 4, 2005 - 1:31 PM

Get up n' git git giiit down A O L's a joke in your town.

Get up n' git git giiit down late AOL wears the late crown :)

-Flava Flave (911's a joke)

Score: 0

By Mike162005

posted Aug 4, 2005 - 6:07 PM

"Get up n' git git giiit down A O L's a joke in your town.

Get up n' git git giiit down late AOL wears the late crown :)

-Flava Flave (911's a joke)"

How old are you? 10? Jesus.

Score: 0

By horsecharles

posted Aug 4, 2005 - 1:53 PM

yeah, aol & yahoo have always left a lot to be desired-- but they're improving in the face of competition... will they do enough? who knows...

and i forgot to add-- add some kind of voip to AOL & it'd clinch the deal for me....

Score: 0

By nate

posted Aug 4, 2005 - 2:30 PM

http://site.aol.com/product/voip.adp

Score: 0

By horsecharles

posted Aug 4, 2005 - 7:55 PM

Thank you Nate! Unfortunately they're not taking the correct tack:

$40 montly for voip + internet-- that price should include voip + webhosting w/ domain name & forums + xdrive lite, nix the dialup-- & they're still trying to sell the nonsensical aol over broadband....

What i had in mind was them driving traffic to their portal by giving for free or cheap a bunch of extras, where they can then make tons of ad & referral revenue.

To wit, i'd do the following in their shoes-- at their portal & their portal only:

1. free web to regular land line call & fax interface at their portal, also sms... this could be sponsored too: click a link/hear an ad for a free call/message...
2. add SIP voip mode to their AIM...& sms texting....
3. a free xdrive lite flavor accessed thru their portal...
4. continuation of #4: acquire SendthisFile or Yousendit-- a free or lite version of it hard-coded to their site. But even better, acquire Akamai, to fully enable all their offerings.
5. Acquire a major webhost & offer a free site commercial package-- complete with shopping cart, payment acceptance, & dedicated forum...

6. Acquire Pricegrabber and add it to the portal...

7. Acquire, host, or sponsor popular internet forums / communities-- there are so many entities without a home or on some sucky host-- that would jumt at this chance & drive a ton of traffic: from non-profits to schools to businesses..
8. Acquire Ebates...

The sky would then be the limit for them-- revenue & referral income thru some type of adsense program, ad-sponsered pacckages of their various offerings, bonus rewards program for clicks on their site & ads, etc.

Thier corporate brother TimeWarner could then offer some kind of Plus Aol membership as a benefit to subscribers.... AOL could offer free Time Warner Voip to its Aol Members with higher pay packages...

I don't know.........

Score: 0

By horsecharles

posted Aug 4, 2005 - 1:17 PM

If they can then offer a free variant...ditto for the next logical step: a "decent" hosting plan(unlike past offerings in this area--w/ plenty of space, bandwidth, domain name, spam/spy filtering...)-- combined w/ their presently-improved email...they could then compete with the big boys, and i'd sure as heck give them a real serious lookover...

Score: 0

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