There’s far too much of both free cloud storage and free online porn these days.

As with far too much of anything free, even if things be lust-worthy at first glance, they tend to lose their allure and are stripped of value soon.

Just yesterday, I stumbled upon a new player, Shared.com, that offers 100GB of free storage and file sharing.

I cannot conceive of any individual needing that kind of online storage unless he’s up to some shady activities.

Shared.com offers both free and paid versions of its service.

The free version is ad-supported.

Not the First

Shared.com is hardly the first cloud storage and file sharing startup to offer freebies to attract users.

There are several cloud storage and file sharing fledglings offering different levels of free cloud storage and file sharing services.

But most of them have one thing in common. They offer at least 2GB of cloud storage free.

While Shared.com might be at the extreme end with its free 100GB of cloud storage, there are several players offering 15GB or more of free storage and file sharing.

Even Google offers 15GB free with its Google Drive service.

So why do businesses offer such freebies?

Simple answer – Few online startups think through their business model carefully.

One time content stalwarts including the New York Times and most newspapers in the U.S. are in dire shape today because they failed to think through the ramifications of giving away their news content – the crown jewels of their business – for free.

Every newspaper in America duped its shareholders by painting a rosy picture of online advertising filling the coffers.

As we now know, the only company that struck gold on the promise of online advertising is Google.

The rest are still chasing after the mirage!