P2P backup solution Zoogmo closes its doors

Computers fail. And so it's always a good idea to have a backup solution, whether it involves regularly copying your important data to a spare hard drive, burning it to disc, or syncing it with an offsite backup network. While companies such as Mozy and Carbonite have made a business out of offering subscription online backup solutions, startup Zoogmo took a different approach by offering users a peer to peer backup solution.

The main difference is that Carbonite and Mozy are still around, while Zoogmo announced today that it will be closing its doors on December 31st. The other difference is that traditional online backup services invest in bandwidth and server space while Zoogmo hoped to rely on a network of users willing to share their bandwidth and space on their hard drives.

Theoretically, that could have worked beautifully. The data would be encrypted, and you could select a trusted group of friends that would help store backups of your data. But while Zoogmo hasn't given any official explanation for the company's decision to pull the plug, I'm guessing it was difficult to sustain a peer to peer network for a company that few people had ever heard of. Storage space and bandwidth would necessarily be limited. More importantly, something about hosting your data backups on a server farm with a big name company feels a lot safer than trusting your important files to a ragtag P2P network.

Tags: backup, p2p, storage, zoogmo