Xdrive
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Xdrive was an online storage and backup service founded in 1999 by Brett O'Brien. It gave consumers a web-based 'virtual hard drive' to store, back up, and share files — documents, photos, music, and video — accessible from any browser. The company raised about $20 million in venture capital during the dot-com era, and AOL acquired it in August 2005, continuing it as a consumer storage offering with 5 GB plans.
02 / Xdrive FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
AOL shut Xdrive down in 2008 as part of a portfolio cull to cut costs and pivot to an advertising business. The service never gained enough users to justify its infrastructure costs: data-storage costs, while falling, still added up, while the service generated few advertising opportunities — a poor fit for AOL's ad-driven strategy. AOL tried to sell Xdrive before deciding to close it.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Brett O'Brien founded Xdrive as an online 'virtual hard drive' storage startup.
- Acquired by AOL
AOL acquired Xdrive for an undisclosed sum and ran it as an independent subsidiary in Santa Monica with 34 employees.
- Shutdown
AOL announced it would close Xdrive along with AOL Pictures and BlueString to cut costs and focus on advertising; the service shut down on December 31, 2008 and all stored files were deleted.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
AOL acquired Xdrive in 2005 for an undisclosed sum, after the startup had raised roughly $20 million in venture capital.
- 02
In 2008 AOL tried to sell Xdrive before deciding to close it together with AOL Pictures and BlueString to cut costs.
- 03
The service shut down on December 31, 2008; users were told to download their files before that date.
- 04
Xdrive never disclosed standalone profit or loss figures, so no loss amount can be recorded.