The site has been growing ever since and has accumulated a steady user base. Instead of using P2P transfers, Bayfiles users can upload and download large files directly from the site.

Besides some issues with their payment provider, Bayfiles hasn’t run into any significant problems to date. However, very recently the site suffered a setback after it became impossible to reach through Google.

Without explanation, Google wiped all of the tens of thousands of Bayfiles links from its search index. The search results below show that the file-hosting service is no longer featured as the top result and a more specific search reveals that all of the site’s URLs have been wiped.

TorrentFreak spoke with the Bayfiles team who have no clue what’s going on. Their robots.txt allows the site to be indexed and other search engines such as Bing do so just fine.

“Perhaps they don’t like filehosting services that can’t be cut off from their payment provider, as we no longer have paid accounts,” the Bayfiles team suggests.

Bayfiles never had a lot of traffic from search engines so there is no major impact on visitor numbers. Still, it’s never good to have your entire service removed by Google.

The most likely explanation is that Google found Bayfiles guilty of some sort of violation for which the site has been removed from Google as a penalty. What type of violation that might be remains a mystery to the site’s operators.

Penalty or not, Bayfiles will continue to serve files all around the world, free of charge.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In the years that followed the BitTorrent site made history as it grew to become one of the most recognized brands on the Internet.

At a time where cyberlockers are quickly catching up with BitTorrent as the preferred way to share files online, today the founders of The Pirate Bay launch a brand new file-sharing venture called Bayfiles. One of the main reasons for this move is to provide users with a more reliable option for sharing and storing files.

“BitTorrent is increasingly throttled or even filtered by ISPs, HTTP usually is not,” Bayfiles co-founder Fredrik Neij tells TorrentFreak.

“Storage and transfers on Bayfiles also preserve users’ privacy. And another advantage is that users can be sure that content stays up, which is important for personal backups. It also guarantees that other personal files such as your MP3 collection are always accessible, so users are able to stream it live to any device,” Fredrik says.

Bayfiles works similarly to other one-click-hosting services such as Megaupload, RapidShare and Hotfile. With just a single click, users can upload files to the Bayfiles server, and then easily share them with the online public. The site itself offers no search functionality or file directory to find content that other people have uploaded.

How strictly the above policy will be enforced is yet to be seen, but co-founder Fredrik Neij told TorrentFreak that their Hong Kong based company Bayfiles Limited has officially registered DMCA agents. After all the trouble they had to go through in court for The Pirate Bay, Fredrik and former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde want to avoid running into more trouble with their new venture.

Looking forward, Neij told TorrentFreak that Bayfiles will be much more than just a simple cyberlocker. There are ideas to expand it into a more feature rich cloud hosting service comparable to the likes of Dropbox. As with The Pirate Bay, the ultimate goal is to make sharing both effortless and efficient.

As for the features, unregistered users can share files up to 250MB, regular members have a limit of 500MB and premium members can upload files as large as 5GB with unlimited storage. The premium accounts do come at a price, 5 euros per month or 45 euros for a full year. Unlike other cyberlockers, Bayfiles does not offer a reward program where uploaders of popular content can be paid for their services.

In the past The Pirate Bay founders have launched many side-projects, with varying success. None of these projects ever rivalled the popularity of The Pirate Bay, but if one site can outgrow the famous BitTorrent site in terms of users, it certainly is Bayfiles.

The popularity of cyberlockers has increased exponentially in recent years. Just a few days ago we reported that 8 of the 10 largest English language file-sharing sites are related to cyberlockers, each with hundreds of millions of pageviews a month. It is not unthinkable that Bayfiles will join this list in the future.

In terms of copyright law, Bayfiles is a perfectly legal operation as long as the site doesn’t encourage or promote copyright infringement. Previously a U.S. federal court ruled that RapidShare, a competing file-hosting service, is not liable for any copyright infringements its users may commit.

That said, we doubt whether Hollywood will be happy with this new venture from a team of people who’ve been their arch rivals for more than half a decade. Exciting times ahead.

Update: According to Google Bayfiles was removed because its pages were seen as “pure spam.” The Bayfiles team filed an appeal and has yet to receive a response.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.