A year ago, today, MegaUpload was taken down by US authorities for copyright infringement. Cloud storage solutions have continued to evolve since then. Users are now more invested in services like DropBox, Box and Google Drive (The last happens to be one of our favorites, due to its obvious connection with Google Chrome). But despite all legal discrepancies, MegaUpload’s Kim Dotcom is not giving up. We have been hearing of the service’s revival for quite some time, and Mega has just become available for the public!
Mega is under beta testing at the time, but anyone can go to mega.co.nz and sign up for an account. Think of it as MegaUpload with a much more private approach. Files are securely encrypted during the upload process, and they can only be shared via a link (much like Mega’s competitors).
Making it further similar to other cloud storage services, one can access all the files in the cloud by using a file manager of sorts. Uploaded files can be organized in folders and shared to one’s will. No one has access to them but the user, making it much safer for both the user and Kim, himself.
There is one area where Mega will go above and beyond what any other cloud storage service currently offers, though – storage space. Dotcom is promising 50 GB of storage to every free user… WOW! Customers can then upgrade to some extremely affordable plans.
Mega’s Pro Account Prices
- Pro I: 500 GB of storage and 1 TB of bandwidth for $9.99/month.
- Pro II: 2 TB of storage and 4 TB of bandwidth for $19.99/month.
- Pro III: 4 TB of storage and 8 TB of bandwidth for $29.99/month.
Compared to Google Drive, Mega offers a steal! There is no 500 GB plan offered by Google, but we can compare Mega to Mountain View’s 2 TB plan. Google Drive’s price for 2 TB of storage is a whopping $99.99/month, 5 times the price of Mega’s Pro II plan. And we thought Google’s plans were affordable.
Kim Dotcom might not be exaggerating when he says “cloud storage will never be the same.” Go ahead and sign up! But be patient, the servers are quite overloaded. Let’s see if this one can stay alive. What do you guys think? Are you going to move to Mega and leave Google Drive (and company) behind?
[Source: Mega]
