Wuala Opens Their Online Storage Service to the Public

Editor’s note: The story below was embargoed until this morning – but was broken last night. After speaking with Wuala founder Dominik Grolimund, he asked us to hold off posting until this morning.

When I interviewed Wuala founder and CEO Dominik Grolimund, I asked him how he defines the Wuala service. He replied, "Wuala is a new way of storing, sharing, and publishing files on the internet. Unlike traditional online storage systems, Wuala is decentralized and can harness idle resources of participating computers to build a large, secure, and reliable online storage. This enables its users to trade parts of their local storage for online storage and it allows us to provide a better service for free."

The big news today out of the Wuala camp is that today marks their public opening. Previously the service was in a closed alpha for just under a year. The company is self-funded. The Wuala team is based in Switzerland and has worked on the product for three years.

I asked Dominik about the Wuala business plan as many online storage companies have tried a variety of models. Dominik noted, "At the moment, we’re experimenting with ads in the public (World) area. Since our costs are lower, this might work. However, there are also other possible business models such as photo finishing, buying additional storage (you can trade if you want, if you don’t, you could buy some additional online storage for a really low price), or also other forms of sponsoring that we’re working on."

Check out other Wuala reviews on Download Squad and Profy.