Online file sharing site RapidShare is going away come March 31st 2015, a note on the service’s website has announced. Users wanting to get their data out of the service need to do just that before April 1st.
Launched all the way back in 2002, RapidShare was one of the first large file sharing sites around, and at one point boasted of having 10 petabytes of data that had been uploaded by its users. The problem here though was that the service had become popular with pirates, meaning an unknown number of the files hosted on RapidShare were being illegally shared.
Come D-day on March 31st all RapidShare accounts will become unavailable and all files will subsequently be deleted automatically. RapidShare is quick to suggest that people get their files ASAP too, because come April there will be no way to retrieve them now matter how important they may be.
Those with a RapidShare Standard Plus ($49.99 per month) or Premium ($99.99 per month) account will be able to extend their subscriptions up until February 28th, leaving them with March as a full month where they can begin their data extraction before it goes off to the big hard disk in the sky.
At the time of writing there has been no sign of any explanation as to why RapidShare is closing down. The site’s blog is not actively updated and its Facebook page has been dark since January of 2014. It’s even worse over on Twitter, with the RapidShare account having shared nothing since December of 2013.
The file sharing and online storage market is not short of competition, and it’s likely that market forces have been at play here. No matter the reason though, come April 1st the Internet will be without one of its longest standing file sharing sites.
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