A chienese company tencent offers 10 TB of free cloud storage

Chinese internet giant Tencent just gave its competitors a serious wake up call. You see, while the likes Baidu and Qihoo 360 have been courting users with the offer of 1TB free cloud storage the Tencent execs decided that just wasn’t enough. No, their users need 10TB of cloud storage.

The data bonanza requires users download an iOS or Android App, which gives them access to a terabyte of storage. As they use more data, Tencent will extend the amount of storage given away up to a whopping 10 terabytes.

To get your free space, you just have to sign up for an account with Tencent’s QQ instant messaging service, download its mobile app (Android or iOS), and activate your free storage on the promo site. But! There are two little catches.

First, you won’t get it all at once. Instead, Tencent will start you out with a (still hefty) 1TB to start, and then as you fill it up it will apparently pump up your limit until it hits 10TB. No word on whether or not it goes back down if you delete stuff, but there’s only one way to find out.

Second, where the hell are these guys getting so much free server space, and why would you ever trust them with that much of your data? Are they using looping hard drives? What is going on?

If however Tencent decides to make it permanent, it could be a massive move in the Chinese online space. Not only does it benefit the average consumer, it also puts serious pressure on specialist cloud storage providers which frequently offer large amounts of storage as incentives for people to sign up.

Certainly though, the likes of Dropbox have never offered as much storage as any of the big Chinese companies are.