Sure, but i'd rather know how that's codified into business rules and policies. I try to do that for my own company. People change, staff moves, even if infrequently, you get a new CEO . . . qualifying this as a personal trait isn't much substance in my book. It's not concrete, even if it's an honorable intention. Sorry, but i don't see how you hinge a business plan on merely an intention to play nice. Google codified their original intent roughly as not doing crappy flashy adverts, so that's a tangible. But some processes are never immediately visible to customers, and how you you apply attitude as a criteria to that? If you run a shop which prides itself on exceptional behaviour (distinct from a market around you where you see values are a real reason hindering growth) is it not reassuring to try at leat to find some measurables? One might manage a lot of this in interview for new hires, or you might insist on a certain policy regards customer support, such as never giving a stonewall answer per a policy but giving your reps the power to look into a problem. What i'm suggestig is you can do wonders with company culture if you nurture it like a first born, but are there not times when this can be checked against behaviour more thoroughly? I'm thinking about the number of times my cellular reps promise me, voice and in writing, they'll fix a billing glitch, and not once have they come through. That's possibly measurable, as an example. As in "why does customer x contact us so much?"
That's why you need to think about providing a valuable service, not "extracting money."
A potentially good business model in the future could be to provide services such as taking piles of media from the family and compiling it into slideshows, videos, etc.
There is a ton of analog media that people want digitized. Offering this service to mourning families and creating a package that could be purchased by/for members of the family could be lucrative.
What i think is scary is the idea subscribers / users might actually rely on such a service 100%.
Or is it more scary to tell your customers, from whom you've not yet worked out how to ask for money, which presumably is essential, that maybe before they send in their most valued pictures that they should run a rigourour local backup regimen? Like they'd enjoy that!
Even more scary yet is the potential for this to be a bait and switch. First you upload your treasured family stuff, then the company, for whatever reason, runs out of money to "develop their business model" or changes control or management, and then they send you a bill to "upgrade" your service to keep your records intact, same time as sentient customers realise by that time there's not been enough reinvestment to actually place any kind of measurable guarantee as to the integrity of your data.
"Please send me the things you most care for, all your precious family stuff. Don't worry, i'll work out a way of making money out of you later!"
That's what i hear.
Meanwhile, optical "rusts", drive controllers fail, popular FSs do nothing to prevent corruption even on simple copy functions (NTFS, looking at you, but you're not alone) and consumer spec HDDs are doing duty cycles more like enterprise array components did a short while back, as machines get used increasingly 24/7 by family members, for streaming vids, for all the stuff many individuals rely on to keep their present social life intact, let alone their legacy family life preserved.
I'm not wholly against TechCrunch, it is useful to have all the startup hopefuls in one place for reference. But with the readership they have, and not even one cursory mention of the pitfalls which are well known to anyone professionally touched by the storage industry, is a travesty. Their advertising revenue is no - doubt robust as a consequence.
I keep reminding myself, that despite Google's history as a bait and switch (from "no advertising" to biggest ad agency in their economy) the most significant thing they've done is make the general public aware of the value in archive, in scanned works, out of copyright works, and even - allowing this is hugely contentious - in the value of capturing storing and promoting "abandoned" works, the value of which no-one likely knows. I've strong reservations as to Google's approach. But if you read William Patry, their counsel for copyright, you couldn't find a more lucid general, philosophical approach to why what they do is not against the spirit of copyright law. (which views i believe he held before he joined Google) . Oops, touching on a huge subject, but my private view is that because Google can do this, whether they effectively monetise it or not, they are alerting a vast cross-section of the population to the idea there's value in old works, scanning, digital preservation. Having run a "ancient work" preservation project more than a decade ago, which flunked as budget was really beyond a small outfit who had to turn income more directly, and the quality ambition was high even by current expectations, the thing which bugged me was the number of people who suggested the effort was futile, of no particular value. Now, of course, i get told how such projects are futile because Google will just do them, but there's more art to preservation than they are generally doing - they showed the mass route and network effects can be done. Some of the stuff i was involved in capturing simply isn't even in national libraries. Not bitter or anything, in fact just jealous i'd not been born a decade or two later to enjoy all of this when i was in education, thinking i'd not have dropped out had i been able to do so much research so readily i'd have quickly understood my interests the better :)
I've no idea as to why my longer comment above was modded down. Was merely a discussion as to real risks in data storage of emotional value, some bits personal, some technical in aspect.
I think it's fair to be skeptical of new companies offering long term services. I wasn't bashing the company who is subject of this discussion. I was merely saying that the scary bit is not just i you're an investor but possibly also as a customer. Anyone recently read a SEC filing of their bank / thrift / life policy company? My most important thought regards this discussion is that there are ways you can communicate the stability of your company to customers who wish to rely on it over long periods of time. One way i imagine not to do that well, is to point out you've no business model. That's not quite the same as a "caveat emptor" warning. In fact the lack of plan, or general presentation of te service, has obviously been taken to be altruistic by some observers who have commented here. No problem with that, it's a cool idea, but try it differently, would you buy archive length storage from me, even for good money, if i said i'd no idea how to break even? Or is it okay only if it's free, which presumably it cannot be later on? How would you make this break even?