Kim Dotcom’s cloud storage service Mega opens limited access for some users

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom’s new service Mega launched to a limited number of people today, revealing pricing tiers and features for the first time.

The Mega service is essentially a cloud storage locker that’s similar to Dropbox, according to TechCrunch. Mega offers 50GB of free storage to users to upload all their media files, documents, and other files. But there’s an indication that Mega will offer more than just the standard file locker storage, with features that include domain, website, and email hosting as well as a database of all your contacts, Google-docs style web apps, and instant messaging.

The only features that are really available at this time, according to TechCrunch’s report, is the file sharing functionality. Of course, most people who try to access the site will be met with a simple “Access Denied” message (including us), so it may be a while before you can actually check it out.

As for pricing, Mega has three premium tiers of service: 500GB of storage/1TB bandwidth for €9.99, 2TB of storage/4TB bandwidth for €19.99, and 4TB of storage/8TB bandwidth for €29.99.

Honestly, it seems like Mega is trying to do too much. The service wants to take on Yammer, Google Docs, Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox, and others. It’s nice that you’ll get the 50GB of storage, but even if all the extra features (web document apps, etc.) are great, are you really going to entrust your data to a guy that made his money from looking the other way when people were committing acts of piracy? Sure, the U.S. and New Zealand governments ignored many privacy laws when going after him, and for that he’ll probably go down in history as someone of importance — meaning Kim Dotcom is sort of like the Larry Flynt of cloud storage.

Still, if you did gain early access to Mega, let us know your thoughts in the comment section below, especially if you liked using it.

Photo via home_of_chaos/Flickr