Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu operating system, is shutting down its cloud storage service, Ubuntu One.
Canonical first introduced Ubuntu One as a beta service in 2009. It has since grown to become a suite of cloud services including storage, sync, sharing and streaming. It featured a freemium model where a basic account with 5 GB of free storage was free, and users could pay extra for music streaming and additional storage.
According to a blog post from Canonical CEO Jane Silber, Ubuntu One didn’t fit within the company’s goal of “making the best converged operating system for phones, tablets, desktops and more.” In other words, Canonical wants to build a platform that can enable people to access other third-party content and services.
Silber also notes that it wouldn’t be sustainable for Ubuntu One to compete with other cloud storage providers that offer as much as 50GB of free storage.
Now it is no longer possible to purchase storage or music from the Ubuntu One store. The current services will be unavailable starting in June 2014, and user content will remain available for download until the end of July before being permanently deleted.
Moving forward, Ubuntu One and associated apps will no longer be updated or supported by Canonical.
Ubuntu One seems to be running the course of other cloud storage services like AVG’s LiveKive which is also being phased out. In AVG’s case, ending LiveKive means the company can focus more completely on its core security offerings.
Many people who rely on Ubuntu One are expected to either move their files to local storage, or migrate to an alternative service.