America Online Inc. said Thursday it has bought the online storage company Xdrive Inc. to meet the growing needs of consumers with rapidly expanding collections of digital music, photos and other files.
Wow, that was close. I just canceled my Xdrive account about two months ago. Not that there’s anything wrong with the service. In fact, Xdrive’s technology and support were great. I just wasn’t using it, and it made no sense to pay $100 a year for something I wasn’t using. At $2.99 a month, Box.net is a much better deal. (Disclosure: Box.net very briefly advertised on this site a year ago, and I have a complimentary account on the service.)
I expect Xdrive to go downhill rapidly now that AOL is in charge. I hope I’m wrong.
Ed Bott 
Cheaper than box.net, and twice the capacity:
Link
That’s an interesting hack, but that’s exactly what it is. As the author properly notes: “While Google keeps improving their Gmail service, they also tend to break the tool’s ability to connect to Gmail. … Please be aware that support for this tool may suspend at any time if Google decides to block its use.”
Same thing. Canceled a few months ago reluctantly because I just didn’t use it enough. Excellent product and good people.
I used it briefly to share medical records with out of state doctors. Seems that somebody smart would start just a service for a reasonable price.
Great site Ed. I think Ed is right, Xdrive will go downhill with AOL running the show. Actuallu, I had an Xdrive account and cancelled it because the interface was too sluggish. I’m in a free trial over at http://shadowstorage.com and then interface is much faster, cleaner. They don’t have the backup software client yet but the web-based part of the service is much more responsive than xdrive. Price is about the same$9.50 for 5GB. They do have inbound and outbound faxing which Xdrive never deliever on. I’ll probably go for 5GB but they do offer 1 and 2GB plans as well.
Your predictions that Xdrive will go to pot under AOL are already true, after less than a month. For nearly a week, now, the service is totally unresponsive and non-functional. After complaining, they’re refunding me a month’s fee, but say they have no idea how long their “major upgrade” will take to fix. I’m ready to bail.