Yahoo! Briefcase is closing down

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steve98

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Topic # 30723 19-Feb-2009 08:54

Remember that 1GB of online storage you were promised as part of Yahoo!Xtra 'Bubble' (or 'Premium Services' as its now branded)? Yeah well kiss it goodbye -- I just went there to download a document I have stored and was greeted by a notification that the service is closing at the end of March and to download my files before they are lost. I don't recall receiving any email notification about this.

I have re-uploaded my stuff to Dropbox (www.getdropbox.com) - anybody know of any better alternatives? I like Dropbox but I don't want to sync it with my PC, I just want it stored online. They don't seem to like that too much but I can make it work.

Cheers

Steve

kingjj

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Reply # 196647 19-Feb-2009 09:00

This was announced about three weeks ago:

A Yahoo! spokeswoman confirms the service will retire from this world on the last day of March. "[Briefcase] was launched nearly 10 years ago and usage has been significantly declining over the years," she tells us. "Users outgrew the need for the service and turned to offerings with much more storage and enhanced sharing capabilities, e.g. Yahoo! Mail and Flickr. Discontinuing the service allows us to focus our efforts on more broadly used products, in line with our commitment to deliver the best possible user experience."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/30/briefcase_murdered/

There are plenty of other options available. Yahoo have been doing a cost cutting measure over the last 6 months and are shutting down a lot of their old product lines, recently this included Yahoo! Pets and MyWeb (one of their three bookmarking services). I suspose they expected you to find out by visiting the site and seeing the notice.

freitasm

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Reply # 196648 19-Feb-2009 09:07

Try skydrive.live.com

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steve98

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Reply # 196650 19-Feb-2009 09:11

kingjj: I suspose they expected you to find out by visiting the site and seeing the notice.

Yeah I'm not really sure that's good enough, especially for premium users who are paying for it either direct to yahoo or as part of their ISP package. I store personal documents on it such as insurance, birth certificates etc just so that if the worst happens I have copies of important stuff that I can access from anywhere. I don't go into it every day, and I shouldn't have to. Since you sign in with your Yahoo! login I would have thought it would have been easy enough and courteous of them to send notification to you. Just my 2c.

Steve

nzbullet

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Reply # 196666 19-Feb-2009 10:17

I agree, how hard would it have been to send an email out to users advising them it is being shut down. A press release or a notification when you go there just isn't good enough, especially for those who keep important docs there.

Personally my favourite is Dropbox but I do like the sound of SkyDrive with it's 25GB of Free storage!

There are some other alternatives that might be worth a try, if you don't like Dropbox or Microsoft:

3 Alternatives (Maybe 4) To Yahoo! Briefcase

Also don't forget GDrive, when it gets released.

Cheers
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raytaylor

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Reply # 196820 19-Feb-2009 23:18

This should be taken up with Telecom. They are on-selling you a product and they are responsible for sorting out problems with up-level providers. If Telecom are stopping a service that they sell to you, they should be alerting people because of the type of service this is.

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Chribotics

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Reply # 196872 20-Feb-2009 10:53

I received an email notifying Yahoo!Xtra Briefcase users about the closure just this morning. It was in my primary account inbox, but not in my sub-account's mail box yet. I guess the mailout has been staggered over a few days.

According to Yahoo! the subscriber numbers have declined dramatically when they removed the storage limit on email. It looks like user behaviour forced Y! to shut the (outdated) service.

I have created a folder in Webmail and named it "Documents to keep" and just email the important documents to myself and drag them into my Documents to keep folder. In the subject line I have entered the name of document, e.g. Passport, to make it easier to find later. It works very well for me.

I find this works much better than Briefcase's outdated interface.

Anarkist

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Reply # 197103 21-Feb-2009 13:30

Please note: Any posts, comments, or contributions in this forum are posted by me as an individual acting in my own right and do not necessarily reflect the views of any company I work for, clients I've consulted for or anyone else.

Anarkist

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Reply # 197104 21-Feb-2009 13:33

raytaylor: This should be taken up with Telecom. They are on-selling you a product and they are responsible for sorting out problems with up-level providers. If Telecom are stopping a service that they sell to you, they should be alerting people because of the type of service this is.

So hypothetically speaking, if Ford motor company for example for some reason stop making air conditioning on their Falcon models you're suggesting we should go to the car sales yard and express your distaste for the matter to the poor bastard behind the counter (who can do absolutely nothing about the fact) instead of sending a well written letter to Ford themselves?

Wouldn't it be smarter to write that letter and just roll down the windows for free (i.e. find a similar service online for free) or pay for an aftermarket air conditioning kit to be installed which is cooler and more effective than the first option (i.e. subscribe to a paid hosting service which is reliable and has extra features) and be over and done with it?