It has been with us for 17 years, it has survived massive closures of download websites, such as Megaupload or Rapidshare. And, furthermore, it has 45 million unique users, hosting millions of files on its servers. Who would have thought that, with such figures, a website could shut down? Well, thus, those responsible for zippyshare They have just announced the closure of their online file storage service.
Zippyshare was born in 2006 as a alternative to storage services from the moment where the most important thing was to offer free storage and through a clear and simple interface. Despite having great competition (Megaupload had been born a year ago), users soon started uploading their files to this hosting, mainly as Megaupload’s main mirror and as an alternative for those who, at that time, did not they wanted to pay to download unlimited files from Megaupload.
17 years have passed, and although its competition has opted for paid business models, packed with advanced functions and features, this platform has hardly changed. Its philosophy remains that of 2006, to be a simple and free storage for all users, supported only by advertising. And surely years ago this advertising generated a lot of money, but the income has fallen precipitously, and its developers have decided that they can no longer maintain the platform.
“No one needs a dinosaur like us anymore”
As those responsible say, maintaining their philosophy of free storage through a simple interface has cost them business. The evolution of rivals, such as Mega, and even with OneDrive and Google Drive, Zippyshare has remained a second-rate platform that nobody uses, except to download “pirate” files from the network. Despite this, it still received tens of millions of visits a month, but the accounts did not come out.
As its administrators assure, the price of electricity has multiplied by 2.5 in the past year. Therefore, due to the large number of servers they have running, it is economically unfeasible to continue. There are many other reasons that have led the developers of this website to shut down, such as the thousands of DMCA requests it received every day, but, in a nutshell, «they can no longer afford to maintain the site«.
What to do with the files
The web administrators have confirmed that, at the end of this month, the servers will be shut down forever. Therefore, it urges all users who have files saved in this cloud to download them and save them elsewhere or, otherwise, they will be lost forever.
Despite the fact that in June 2019 Zippyshare blocked access from Spain (we have to enter through a VPN if we want to download anything), we keep it with great affection. Another storage giant is leaving, and with it tens of millions of files that, once the servers go down in 10 days, will disappear forever from the face of the Internet.
RIP Zippyshare (2006-2023)
