Okay, so the title may be a little misleading but I thought this was funny and sad. I just read Walter Mossberg’s column (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal which talks about FolderShare which Microsoft recently acquired. In a nutshell, FolderShare is a peer-to-peer application that allows you to share files securely with a group of folks on either Windows machines or Macs. So I thought I would check it out since it may help me manage a bunch of files that I need for a team project at school. I installed it and started to go through setting it up when I see this page (picture touched up to protect my account info but otherwise this is an accurate reflection of this page):
Huh?!? I know the acquisition of FolderShare was just announced back on November 3, 2005 but given Microsoft’s past issues with Google, I would have thought that pulling this would have been job #1.
All I know is, Google is pure evil.
[...] Foldershare is another tool that could potentially be used for a backup system of sorts. I used Foldershare to actually share documents and project files while I was at school but I could see it being useful for backing up files between computers too. Foldershare was previously a stand alone company but they were acquired by Microsoft (see the funny thing that happened when they were acquired here and then here). File updates are sent from machine to machine on a peer to peer basis over an encrypted link. Your files are never sent to a central storage server so they are safe from prying eyes. Best of all is the cost – absolutely free. And in this case the software is available for Windows and Mac. Don’t even hold your breath for a Linux version though. [...]