Omnidrive: Officially Cooked?
Omnidrive, the Australian-based online storage solution that we named "tops in its class" last summer and was once called the "clear leader" in the space by TechCrunch, appears to have quietly joined the deadpool. Last week, the site's domain name expired and the site is now displaying a Network Solutions parking page with the notice "omnidrive.com expired on 04/24/2008 and is pending renewal or deletion." This is not the first brush with the deadpool that the company has had, but it certainly appears to be the last.
We reported in December that Omnidrive appeared to be headed for the deadpool following months of uptime and support issues. After our post, CEO Nik Cubrilovic emailed us to assure us that the company was profitable and was planning to raise another round of funding this year. "While some might view not responding to forum posts and/or posting on our blog as a sign of being dead, it is just because we are so overloaded at the moment and have a lot to work on," he told us.
The site then went down in January, which Cubrilovic said was due to a failed hard drive. "We had a new server up within hours and we restored backups of the site, and it is up-and-running again," he wrote in comments on a post at WebWorkerDaily. "I am really sorry for the inconvenience to our users of not being able to access the main site, although the actual Omnidrive servers were not affected at all and you would not have had any problems accessing your accounts."
We've been getting emails all winter from irate customers asking us to find out what's up at Omnidrive. Without a domain name, it would appear that the troubled company is finally ready to join the deadpool.
Note: we promise we didn't plan for this to be the day of dead companies.
UPDATE: Please see this post for a continuation of the Omnidrive saga.
Comments
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Too bad.... but when you're too busy to even cursorily update your customers via forums and your service is so shaky that a hard drive failure can take it down... /shrug.
Posted by: rick gregory | May 2, 2008 11:18 AM
I haven't been able to access my account with them for months now, and have since moved on to JungleDisk anyway. Too bad I had actually paid for a year's worth of storage with Omnidrive, though...
The worst part is that they didn't even bother contacting their paying customers to let them know what was going on, or at least give them a heads up to get any data out that they might not have backed up somewhere else.
Posted by: trent olson | May 2, 2008 12:11 PM
Looks like Nik has dropped off the face of the internet: http://www.nik.com.au/
Posted by: Vlad | May 2, 2008 5:10 PM
I am (or should that be was?) an Angel Investor in Omnidrive.
I personally have not heard from Nik for about 2 months, and suspect Omnidrive it is out of business/cash.
I will be blogging about my disappointing and frustrating experience in regards to Nik and Omnidrive soon. Will pop back in here and add a link when I do.
Posted by: Clay Cook | May 2, 2008 9:13 PM
RIP. http://benbarren.blogspot.com/2008/05/basis-of-any-business-is-to-make-money.html
Posted by: bb | May 3, 2008 1:23 AM
@ trent olson : same here
The system has been giving the same error for months: it lets you slowly upload the file (advanced uploader doesn't load itself) and then the uploaded file shows up as a 0k icon...
Yes, it's over.
Posted by: citizento | May 3, 2008 2:30 AM
Yikes.
How long till they get removed from Crunchbase and get deadpooled on TC too?
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/omnidrive
Posted by: Mark Rimmer | May 3, 2008 5:47 AM
As I mentioned in my previous comment above.
I am an investor in Omnidrive and have just blogged regarding my experience investing in Omnidrive.. http://www.gooruze.com/members/claycook/blog/119381/My-experience-investing-in-Nik-Cubrilovic-and-Omnidrive/
Y
ou can also use this URL...
http://tinyurl.com/43ee67
Regards
Clay
Posted by: Clay Cook | May 3, 2008 7:04 AM
this always sucks to see. It seems like a crowded space, and with services like Amazon's S3 (via JungleDisk) offering such a cheap and attractive service, is there much of a business model in this space anymore?
I'm rooting for the DropBox guys and I hope they prove me wrong!
Posted by: adam greene | May 3, 2008 1:16 PM
I remember listening to a podcast that included Arrington, Nik and some guys from Amazon S3 back in 2006.
The crux of the conversation was Omnidrive should move its back end over to S3, but Nik wasn't interested, stating that Amazon was too expensive. I suspect if Omnidrive had made that strategic move, Omnidrive might be in a very different place.
Sadly the Aussie startup is a dying breed!
Posted by: Craig Baker | May 3, 2008 10:47 PM
It works for me...
http://www.omnidrive.com/
http://i26.tinypic.com/2yty2pe.jpg
But like a minute later it refreshed and redirected me to a wodpress could not connect page.
Posted by: Max | May 5, 2008 8:23 AM
@Max: Check out this updated post: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/omnidrive_ceo_nik_cubrilovic_responds.php
So Arrington's friend goes tits up and he says nothing - a bit like Edgeio. His undisclosed investment in Omnidrive and his clear promotion of the service on TC sucks.
Bottom-lime you better be friend of Arrington on the way up or down or he will rip you a new arsehole. Nik is therefore protected from the TC venom but why?
Posted by: Hamster | May 5, 2008 3:13 PM
Omnidrive.com appears to be back up and working again - I was able to log into my account and view my stored files.
Posted by: Cheyne | May 6, 2008 10:28 PM