Canonical Shuts Down Cloud Storage Service Ubuntu One

Ubuntu creator Canonical just announced that it is shutting down its cloud storage service called Ubuntu One. Among the reasons cited, increased competition is an important one — maybe the service didn’t really take off as Canonical intended.

“Additionally, the free storage wars aren’t a sustainable place for us to be, particularly with other services now regularly offering 25GB-50GB free storage,” Jane Silber wrote on the blog. “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.”

Ubuntu One was one of the rare Canonical freemium service. The company chose to compete directly with big competitors, such as Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and more.

Ubuntu One accounts were used in other parts of the Ubuntu ecosystem. These accounts won’t cease to function. You will still be able to log in with your account, attach a credit card in order to buy apps and more.

Starting today, users can’t buy more space. On June 1st, syncing will stop. And on July 31st, Canonical will wipe out all the data from its servers. You will still have all your data on your local hard drive as long as it’s up to date. Annual subscribers will get a refund.

And because it’s Canonical, the source code will be released under an open-source license. Maybe we will see open-source syncing platforms compatible with Ubuntu One-like clients in the future. Or at least that’s the plan.