Today, it is common to save documents, photos or videos in what we call the cloud. Cloud storage is so integrated that sometimes we do not know if we have something stored on our phone, on our computer, or if it is hosted on a Google Drive, Dropbox or Movistar Cloud server . It does not matter, because it is everywhere , always available.
The cloud has been a blessing for those of us who work with different devices . No more having to move files from one place to another, make copies, carry USB sticks, external drives or SD cards. Cloud storage makes it easy for us to save content online and share it with whoever we want .
But although we are used to it, Portugal Email List services such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Movistar Cloud have little between us. However, everything is going very fast on the Internet and as soon as we adopt a new technology we do not remember how we could live without it
CompuServe changes everything in cloud storage
Older veterans will remember the tapes and diskettes . The physical format was the only one available to store information and share it from one computer to another. 8 or 5-inch floppy disks that stored tens or hundreds of kilobytes to the 3.5-inch floppy disk, which stored 1.44 MB. Then came the optical disc or CD (700 MB), followed by the DVD (4.7 GB).
In parallel, Flash memories managed to store information on a device that could fit in your hand and you could connect to the computer via USB. Not to mention the SD cards , popularized by digital cameras and video cameras, and external drives, today from 2 TB onwards.
But the first precursor to cloud storage is FTP. A protocol that was born in the 70s of the last century and that facilitates the task of storing, sharing and obtaining files between computers. From a server to a client. He also contributed to the development of the World Wide Web . Its popularity only waned with the advent of cloud storage. Until then, there were even those who had their own home FTP server thanks to NAS storage systems or with a simple computer connected all day.
Today the FTP protocol is still used to access the content of other computers, as a private cloud. However, there are alternatives such as SSH, SCP, Samba or WebDAV that also allow access to folders and files remotely, through the Internet.
a journey from Dropbox to today
In technology and informatics it is not so important to be the first but to do it well . mobile lead Apple did not invent the mobile phone but it revolutionized the smartphone market with its iPhone. Today all mobile devices have a screen that covers the entire front of it, something that was not the case before the iPhone.
Another example is what happened with Google Drive , which was originally called Google Docs (2006). It wasn’t the first or the only one, but it would eventually unseat Dropbox and the like. The initial idea was to have an online word processor, an alternative to Microsoft Word for the browser. Little by little it was incorporating more tools to create spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, forms . And in 2012, it was renamed Google Drive to become a cloud storage service.
Its success was due to various circumstances. First, the ability to create documents online. Second, its integration with Google, the most popular search engine on the market. And to hook the user, it set itself apart from the competition by offering free 5GB space . In 2012 it meant a lot and it ended up being a benchmark, the minimum free amount. Today, the figure has risen to 15GB.
We owe Google Drive to popularize cloud storage among the average Internet user. Today everyone is familiar. In addition, it promoted the creation of dozens of alternatives. Some of them specialized in backup copies, others in images or video, etc. For their part, the first to arrive, such as Dropbox or Box , had to evolve and adapt
