Canonical is to shut down its Ubuntu One cloud storage service as it seeks to devote more of its resources to the ongoing development of the Ubuntu operating system, which it is hoped will make a major impact on smartphones and tablets in the near future.
As of today, it is no longer possible to purchase storage or music from the Ubuntu One store, and it will no longer be included in future releases of Ubuntu, while its smartphone applications will be updated to reflect the change.
The service will no longer be usable from 1 June, and content will be deleted on 31 July. Canonical says those with remaining annual subscriptions will be refunded, dating back to today, and it will be in contact to tell them how they can download their content before the deadline.
“The free storage wars aren’t a sustainable place for us to be, particularly with other services now regularly offering 25GB-50GB free storage,” said Canonical. “If we offer a service, we want it to compete on a global scale, and for Ubuntu One to continue to do that would require more investment than we are willing to make.
“We choose instead to invest in making the absolute best, open platform and to highlight the best of our partners’ services and content.”
However despite the demise of the service, Canonical is keen to see the project continue as a community project and will release the source code.
“We continue to believe in the Ubuntu One file services, the quality of the code, and the user experience, so will release the code as open source software to give others an opportunity to build on this code to create an open source file syncing platform,” it added.
Canonical recently announced its first two smartphone manufacturing partners following the failure to secure its funding target for the Ubuntu Edge and it is expected that the handsets will be released later this year. It is aimed at Android users wanting an alternative platform, with CEO Mark Shuttleworth admitting that Ubuntu Mobile is probably not going to be appeal to iPhone users.
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There is nothing wrong to refocus your resources and energy to your bread and butter which is putting out there a good OS. The Cloud storage industry is getting really competitive and it's not for everyone and it's to see that some companies recognize when it's time to let go. With that in mind I can't wait to check out the new Ubuntu Phone.
That's great, not having to download Ubuntu with embedded features like the cloud storage and Amazon search of your private keywords. Those are some of the reasons I switched to Xubuntu. I wish there was a way at install, to select which stuff you want on your system. Like some people want a full feature office product like Libreoffice, while others want basics like Gnumeric, and some people prefer no office capabilities. If you get rid of Unity, replace AppArmor with Selinux and improve security for average people by easier management of Selinux and firewall, it would make a great product.