Can Kim Dotcom's Mega give competitors run for their money?

BANGALORE, INDIA: Does the new file sharing website, Mega, by Kim Dotcom, of Megaupload notoriety, hold the potential to be a game changer in the world of cloud storage services? May be yes and may be not.

As to why we think it will not be one is because the technology majors such as Google, Microsoft, Apple are already there and have the early come, if not the first come, advantage over Dotcom's Mega in the online storage service space.

Moreover, Dotcom's notoriety might act against his new venture, given that his earlier Megaupload.com, which then claimed of having about a billion users and four per cent share of all Internet traffic, was charged of criminal copyright infringement before it was pulled down in January 2012.

The questions now is will users yet again bet on such a service and put their data on Mega? Well, seems likely because as claimed by its maker on his twitter page, Mega received '1,00,000 registered users in less than 1 hour of its launch', and that is not a small figure per say.

Dotcom also throws up some interesting facts/fun facts on his twitter page, which are.

'From 0 to 10 Gigabit bandwidth utilization within 10 minutes'

'Fastest growing startup in Internet history?'

'2,50,000 user registrations'.

'Lets make it 5% of the Internet this time'

'Fun fact: A single Mega rack has more bandwidth available than the entire country of New Zealand'

 

Now, coming to why we think it holds a chance against the likes of Google and Apple is its service pricing, which can play in favour of Mega.

While Google and Apple have an advantage over Dropbox (2GB free) as they give 5GB of online storage free of charge with their cloud services GDrive and iCloud respectively, Microsoft's Skydrive, on the other hand, have an advantage over them all as it gives 7GB of space free on signing up. However, they are minuscule when it comes to Mega's 50GB of free space.

Not just that, even for additional storage they do not stand a chance against Mega. See for yourself.

Skydrive (Annually)



Google Drive

Dropbox (Annually)

Mega

As one can see Mega's offer starts from where Dropbox' ends. Moreover, while Dropbox and iCloud charge about a $100 for 50GB of online space, Mega gives the same for free.

This price disparity in service charges might force others to take a re-look at their own pricing structure and hopefully soon we might hear some special offers or price cuts from them.

With regards to Mega, one can only say that if not like its predecessor, which made over $175 million in a few years before it was pulled down, it can at least give its competitors a run for their money.