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#数码点评派的迷失与变革#
Time always seems to inadvertently carve its mark, just as food has a shelf life, everything has a lifespan. What in this world can remain effective forever? Brother Jie was confused and pondered the question.
At first, the introduction to this thinking came from a movie. However, life is often more real than movies and makes people get lost. Just like the Alibaba Cloud disk, which once promised to "never limit the speed", it is now also implementing speed limit measures for free users. Has the original self-confidence faded now?
With the passage of time, the policy of speed limit of Alibaba Cloud disk inevitably arrives. So, what is the actual situation? I randomly selected a large file on Alibaba Cloud disk to download. In the past, this file should be able to make full use of bandwidth for fast downloads. However, when downloading the file now, the top of the client prominently displays: "Currently busy downloading, you can experience the three-minute SVIP speed download channel." ”
This new tip reminds me that the download bandwidth is only 3MB/s, which is indeed much faster than the hundreds of KB/s of Baidu network disk. However, compared to the 150 megabit of broadband I owned, Alibaba Cloud Disk clearly throttled my speed. Now, to experience true full speed downloads, it is essential to purchase an SVIP membership.
I glanced at the price of Alibaba Cloud Disk SVIP, which is more affordable than Baidu Network Disk. For people who are not willing to toss, spending money to solve problems may be the easiest way.
However, there are also some users who may ask, why don't I try other methods and instead spend money to solve the problem? Actually, there is still a way. During non-peak download periods, the download speed of Alibaba Cloud disks is acceptable. The download speed is about 2-3MB/s, which is enough for downloading small files.
But this led me to think about the usage scenarios of Alibaba Cloud disks. It initially gave away a lot of free storage space to many new users, seemingly to compete with Baidu's network disk and provide more capacity. However, in the past two and a half years, users have stored many large files in Alibaba Cloud Disk, such as 4K movies, educational videos, and large-scale games.
However, surprisingly, Alibaba Cloud Disk began to implement speed limits. Without purchasing an SVIP membership, downloading a GTA 5 game may require hanging up your computer for an entire day. Even during off-peak hours, if you download files at seven or eight o'clock in the evening, you are likely to encounter download spikes, resulting in a sharp drop in download speed, and may even be the same as Baidu's network disk, with only tens of percent bandwidth usage.
As soon as the speed limit policy was released, some SVIP users were dissatisfied. Some of them intend to quickly download files locally and then move on to other online applications. Some users said that after years of tossing and turning the network disk, they have become tired, and they plan to buy a large-capacity hard disk, download the files backed up by the cloud disk to the local computer, and completely cut off the cloud disk.
However, the reality is that it is difficult for most users to actually stop using cloud disks. Many users have to continue to use Alibaba Cloud disks, even though they feel helpless about their "words and not believe" approach. You can recall that at the beginning, the official website of Alibaba Cloud Disk wrote "pay or not, no speed limit". Now, however, everything has changed...
In addition to no longer throttling speed, Alibaba Cloud Disk also has a powerful feature, that is, you can download without logging in. Today, many mainstream applications struggle to get users to sign up. This operation of Alibaba Cloud Disk has won the applause of many users.
But now? Sorry, you can't save and download files without logging in.
It's been a decade and it's been as if nothing has changed much. I also remember that when Alibaba Cloud Disk first appeared, it was reported that the "Internet Disk Wars 2.0 era" was coming, and personal network disk users would benefit. However, looking back now, the so-called "online disk war 2.0" seems calmer than the previous competition. Looking back at 2013, the companies that entered the field of personal network disks at that time were all quite powerful. Kingsoft Expressway first announced the free 100G space.
Then, 360 quickly followed. They also send space? Kingsoft sends 100G, then I will send 360G for free forever.
Beyond the world, however, there is a larger world. Tencent is rich
Thick giants, also made a move. They directly give away a permanent 10T network disk capacity to overwhelm competitors.
Nowadays, Baidu network disk seems to be a relatively rational party, providing 2T free space for new users. It's not much, but at least it can compete with other online drives that only offer a few tens of gigabytes of space.
In this wave of fierce competition for online disks, the ultimate benefit is undoubtedly ordinary users. Each online drive registers an account and gets hundreds of gigabytes or even 1TB of free space, which looks very good. Network disk manufacturers have also invisibly cultivated the habit of users using free large-capacity network disks. However, this also raises two serious questions.
Online disk manufacturers compete for users by giving away benefits, but the user's sense of payment is not strong, and it is difficult for the online disk to return the cost in a short time. Secondly, users have huge storage space in their hands and need to fill these spaces, so they start uploading a lot of content. This content may include pirated novels, music, movies, etc., and the legitimacy of these resources has been questioned. Therefore, in 2016, officials stepped up efforts to crack down on illegal resources, forcing online disk platforms to conduct content moderation. However, the audit requires costs, and the online disk company is in trouble. Since the online disk itself is not profitable, maintaining a high-cost audit system has made many companies abandon the online disk business. In the end, only Baidu Network Disk survived, but it was not very comfortable.
On the one hand, users are accustomed to online disk subsidies and would rather use it for free than pay for it. However, on the other hand, the server and bandwidth costs of network disks are rising, and enterprises cannot maintain a balance between membership fees and enterprise-side services. Faced with this dilemma, speed limits became a response.
However, when Alibaba Cloud Disk joined the war, many expected it to be deadlocked
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