Stefan Mileschin

If you thought Bitcasa's infinite cloud storage was too sweet of a deal to exist on this mortal plane for $99 a year, that's because it was -- or at least partly because the bulk of subscribers filled up far less of their digital lockers than expected. According to the outfit, 98 percent of its customers use less than five terabytes of data, and 92 percent "do not store anywhere close to a terabyte." In addition, the firm says a survey of its customers revealed they valued more features over additional space. As result, the unlimited service will now cost $999 a year, or $99 per month, and the company will focus on making the platform more useful, starting with a freshly-released API. Free accounts have been tweaked to start at 5GB (as opposed to 10GB), and the $99 per year (or $10 a month) tier now nets 1TB of space. For those with even more bits to squirrel away, 5TB can be had by contributing $499 a year (or $49 each month) to Bitcasa's coffers.

Existing subscribers will get to keep their current plan's rates and storage, but won't get access to new offerings -- such as the future Linux client -- unless they switch to the new pricing scheme. Tencent's free 10TB of online storage might sound even more tempting now, but it's worth taking this instance as an example of what could happen to your cloud paradise.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/19/b...&ncid=rss_semi