
15 GB now shared between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos - endijs
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/bringing-it-all-together-15-gb-now.html
======
magicalist
I'm still hoping they'll someday announce Drive (the local file sync part) as
the universal Google Data Liberation mechanism.

For instance, it would be awesome if with this change you could click a button
that says "also sync my gmail with drive" and you'd get a local backup of your
email in your drive folder. Many people wouldn't want to waste the GB of local
space for the backup, and I don't know what format they should actually use,
but having the option would be amazing.

Eventually it should be that all your google data should go through Drive and
by syncable. Imagine the ease on people's mind -- no matter if all the Google
datacenters were struck by lightning or your account alone was disabled for
some reason, good or bad -- _if you already had your data saved locally_ with
no more than clicking a checkbox.

~~~
sp332
It's already pretty trivial to set up a standard IMAP client and sync all your
mail to your desktop. Some clients even support GMail's labels so you don't
have to deal with that. (Each "label" shows up as a different IMAP folder, so
normally you end up with a copy of each email for each label you give it.)

~~~
sneak
> It's already pretty trivial to set up a standard IMAP client and sync all
> your mail to your desktop.

No, not by any means. What magicalist is describing is "pretty trivial". What
you are describing is a big pain in the ass.

~~~
jlarocco
Where is the pain in the ass? Launching the client, clicking on the Google
icon and entering your username/password? Is it really so difficult?

~~~
stevewilhelm
Currently have over 90,000 emails (~9 GB worth) archived in my GMail account.
Any idea how long it would take to transfer it all to my desktop via IMAP?

~~~
droopyEyelids
Furthermore, you have to jump through several difficult-to-recognize hoops to
get that 9GB on your disk. IMAP will only sync what the sever feels are recent
emails, and envelope information for the rest.

~~~
nodata
offlineimap will do it without hoops.

~~~
jedbrown
OfflineIMAP crashes a lot. I have been using it for many years and with each
upgrade, I'm optimistic that stability and/or performance will improve, but it
still sucks a huge amount of CPU and hangs several times per day.

~~~
nodata
I haven't had a problem. Have you reported the crashes and hangs?

------
recuter
The prices they put of up for extra storage are exactly half of what Dropbox
asks. Also, the 15GB free plan compares well to the 2GB Dropbox plan as you
don't have to jump through any referral hoops (or quests), instead you get it
right away.

In the long run this is a commodity and Dropbox won't be able to compete. In
the short term, this is a blog post about Google upgrading a terrible "buy
extra storage" page and convoluted offering that consumers up until now
couldn't bother to digest.

It is an epic race between commodity and incompetence/bureaucracy it seems.
Two of the most powerful forces mankind has ever produced. :)

~~~
bad_user
Google also has a history of raising prices and/or getting rid of freebies for
paid services, once the product is considered stable (read popular), with the
Maps API, Google App Engine and Google Apps serving as examples.

Sorry, but I'm not falling for that again.

~~~
magicalist
It's good to have diversity in the market, and you should use whatever service
you want (I don't really see anything in the article to suggest that merging
storage quotas is a benefit over dropbox, anyway, it's just a simplification
of split storage limits that I know has confused at least some people), but
you're reaching with those examples.

Both the Maps API quota and the AppEngine price changes were not consumer
product changes, and the free Google Apps account change wasn't taking
anything away from anyone, it's just no longer offering a free tier for future
consumers. The only people with room to complain on that one were the people
on HN that day talking about having clients in the pipeline that they'd now
have to add an extra charge for because there was no warning, but if you
already have a free account, there's nothing to "fall for" but making an
assumption that you would be able to sign up for more free accounts.

~~~
bad_user
I am not railing against diversity in the market. I like diversity and I am
glad they released Google Drive. My response was to the parent questioning
slightly more expensive alternatives, not to the piece of news itself.

As to your reply, as I was already mentioning, Google Storage itself was
cheaper prior to Drive and I was using it for Picasa. I'm still on the old
plan, paying a yearly $20 for 80 GB of storage (because I may use it for Docs
and because I was too lazy to pull some photos out of Picasa).

You can always come up with a rationale like the Maps API and App Engine not
being " _consumer products_ ", however Google is the only company I have a
relationship with that increases prices instead of decreasing them and that
takes away freebies. Amazon's AWS services are also not consumer products and
they get cheaper over time. Amazon's freebies have a clear expiration date
(like the 1-year free tier, which you know lasts for only 1 year, because it's
in the freaking title).

Speaking of App Engine, they not only changed their prices, they changed their
pricing scheme, breaking the original promise of the service. I could rail
endlessly about how App Engine sucks, but that's for another discussion.

Speaking of Google Apps - you view it as a special offer. I view it as a
broken promise, because they never mentioned that they are going to pull this
option after releasing it.

First of all, I ended up saying to several small business owners " _create an
account on Google Apps, it's both free and awesome_ ". Now their stuff is tied
to Google Apps. For now their accounts are free, but you never know. They are
also subject to Google's TOS, so they could get locked out of their accounts
by a script that calculated a probability for TOS violations. I'm also
bothered by the lock-in Google does with their @gmail.com email addresses they
require for Google Accounts. Google Apps was a way out, even for normal users.
Not anymore.

------
darreld
This sounds nice but I'm afraid I can't trust Google with my storage needs due
the constant nagging feeling that all my stuff could be gone tomorrow and I
would have no recourse.

The stories of accounts being turned off for unknown (to the users) reasons
are pretty scary to me. The last one was due to the contents of a file in the
user's Google Docs account.

At this point, Amazon and even SkyDrive sound like safer bets, as odd as that
sounds. Maybe with a little more access to customer support I'd be less
queasy.

~~~
rsync
We (rsync.net) offered HN readers[1] 10c/GB, per month pricing, for life
earlier this month ...

I have no idea if you're interested in SSH-enabled storage, or if you use CLI
tools at all, but if you do, email us. We are the safe bet you're looking for.
We've also been doing it much longer than the others you mentioned.

[1] New customers only, please.

~~~
jodrellblank
_[1] New customers only, please._

<http://www.visit4ads.com/details.cfm?adid=32693>

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H--tdhf1DPg>

------
onemorepassword
So how about an update to the OSX client so that it doesn't eat resources or
choke on shared folders?

Or generally put some development behind Drive in general, not just the client
but also the apps that have been rebranded as part of Drive? It's hard enough
to trust Google not to discontinue stuff as it is, being almost completely
stagnant isn't helping.

This isn't development, this just moving the deck chairs a bit.

------
yashodhan
Bullshit, whatever happened to the Gmail Infinity+1 promise? Remember that
counter that promised ever increasing gmail storage? This move seems to
contradict that goal.

------
itafroma
> Google Apps users will also be getting shared storage, so visit the
> enterprise blog to learn more.

This is a big deal. Previously, even though you could upgrade the regular
version of Gmail, you couldn't upgrade your Google Apps Gmail storage for any
price, even if you were a paying customer. A few of our accounts are getting
pretty close to the 25 GB limit for Google Apps Pro customers.

~~~
skorgu
Yeah this is double-edged news for Pro customers. On one hand you can give
people lots of storage. On the other hand they'll use it and it'll then be
that much harder to ever move _off_ big G.

~~~
itafroma
While it does give an incentive to stay, I'm not sure it makes it _harder_ to
leave. For Gmail and Docs at least, the export format (mbox through IMAP and
Office docs, respectively) are the standard for anywhere you might want to go
or anything you might want to roll on your own.

~~~
skorgu
It's definitely doable either way but having a fixed maximum mailbox size
makes a lot of things a lot easier. Individual users get moved in smaller and
bounded chunks, you can spec storage utilization as a simple function of
number of users and not worry about shuffling people around as mailboxes grow,
things like that.

------
sp332
But I still can't see my photos in my Drive?

~~~
canthonytucci
Nope, they've got to have a reason for your G+ notification to always be
highlighted, and a reason to have anyone visit (if only accidentally, or
begrudgingly) G+

------
codereflection
I still want something that will consolidate my free space between Dropbox,
Live, Drive, Amazon, etc...

~~~
artursapek
You'll never get it because nobody wants users like you.

~~~
sublimit
What's this about?

~~~
artursapek
patio11 puts it well:

    
    
        The worst customers, I call them pathological customers, 
        are attracted to things that don’t have a lot of money. 
        It’s amazing how many people have told me this. You raise 
        prices, and you deal with less crazy people. At 99 cents, 
        people have very unreasonable expectations.
    

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/04/24/marketing-for-people-
who...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/04/24/marketing-for-people-who-would-
rather-be-building-stuff/)

~~~
k-mcgrady
Very true. I noticed this with an iPhone app I developed. It was a sports app
and I manually updated things like results and tables throughout the year. The
app sold well at 99¢. As it was a sports app and required regular updating
(not to mention the feature updates I regularly put out) I decided to create a
new app and charge for it again the following season. It had some new features
but the basic functions were all still there. The number of horrible emails I
received was crazy. A lot of people got angry, ignored my explanation, and
told me they would use a competitors app (fine by me). But I was genuinely
surprised by a few emails personally attacking me and telling me to 'fucking
die'. I did this for a few years and the solution seemed to be doubling the
price. Revenues didn't drop away but the pathological customers certainly did.

~~~
artursapek
Wow, that's hilarious. You really got people telling you to "fucking die?"
Some people become so stupid when they're anonymous.

------
rlu
What are "Google+ Photos"? Are these equivalent to when I make an album on
Facebook? If so, I'm not a fan.

I use SkyDrive and have it so pictures I take with my WP are auto-uploaded. As
such, my SkyDrive is filled with tonnssss of pictures (I take a good amount of
photos on my phone). But the pictures that get auto-uploaded to SkyDrive are a
different "type" (at the very least, simply unfiltered) than those which I
would upload to a Facebook album/G+ Photos.

I would be annoyed as a Google service user if I had to choose between
allocating room for "photos uploaded to drive" and "Google+ photos". They
serve different purposes, and a heavy user of both services will have many
photos on both.

~~~
tonfa
It just means that photo above some resolution uploaded through G+ (or instant
upload) count towards your google storage quota (shared with drive and gmail).
I am not sure what you mean by allocating room.

~~~
rlu
Oh wait so in Google land, if I have an Android phone and have instant upload
enabled, photos go into Google+ rather than Google Drive? I think that
alleviates my concern.

~~~
tonfa
Correct, instant upload shows up in Google+ (though I wouldn't be surprised if
they make it surface in drive at some point, that could be convenient).

Edit: and unless you check the box "full resolution upload" it won't count
against your quota anyway.

------
kidcoach
Now if they can just fix the actual syncing of files...

~~~
pantulis
I feel Picasa is in a semiabandoned state.

~~~
codva
I quit Picasa when they dropped support for Linux. Granted it was running
under wine, but it worked.

------
nodata
Very interesting timing - announcing this _before_ Google I/O.

~~~
fpgeek
Yes, this isn't the first thing I've seen recently that Google could have
announced at I/O. Makes me wonder what they are planning to announce there.

------
tempestn
How about a paid feature to attach your own storage to Drive? Say $5/month,
you specify ftp credentials (or sftp), and Drive automatically uses it as
additional storage. Ideally you could choose folders that should always or
never be stored on the external storage, and for anything else it would
automatically push less-used stuff, like a swap.

Seems like a win-win. Sure Google sells a bit less storage to advanced users,
but many of those users would currently use something like OwnCloud anyway.
This would be easier to set up though, lets you have effectively unlimited
storage in one directory tree, and opens up syncing to anything that syncs
with Drive. On Google's side, after the initial development investment, they
get an additional income stream essentially for free.

~~~
tempestn
For $5/month though, I'd ideally want it to include a subscription to a
dyndns-like service, so you could more easily host the additional storage on a
home server.

------
mtgx
Not very exciting news. I would've thought they'd at least increase the
storage to 20 GB by now. After all it's been a year since they gave the 10 and
5 GB to those 2 services, and storage prices have dropped, while storage needs
have increased. Why aren't they keeping up with it?

~~~
bloaf
I'm sitting on a free 25 GB from Microsoft's initial skydrive offering. Google
probably won't increase it until there is some sort of challenger out there.
As it stands, they are offering more space than all their competitors, so its
doubtful an extra 5GB would do much to attract new users, or even
differentiate them much.

~~~
mtgx
> As it stands, they are offering more space than all their competitors

No they are not. That was for old users. New users only get 7GB.

~~~
bloaf
"They" refers to google.

------
cygwin98
No, thanks. Bring back the Reader so we can talk.

------
justzisguyuknow
What about Google Play Music?

~~~
notatoad
google music has a song limit, not a storage limit, so it wouldn't really make
much sense to include it in the storage limits.

~~~
myko
It would be nice if this were reversed though. Also it would be nice if my
tracks were available within Drive.

------
zer
Sounds like a good offer.

Have they added an option to limit the download/upload bandwidth yet?

------
tempestn
This is great. Only downside is the limits and prices for the paid plans
haven't changed. So before you could pay $5/month for 100GB of drive + 5GB
free gmail; now $5/month gets you 100GB combined for both. Still, can't
quibble too much over 5%.

------
jaxbot
Sweet. Now change the ToS a little and my gut will feel better...

------
wfunction
They're rolling out great features, but it's still not possible to save all
revisions of a file onto your disk in Drive. You have to download them one by
one.

~~~
spinchange
If you share a folder publicly or with an individual, they cannot download it
all in its entirety either. The files have to be downloaded one-by-one. Makes
it very toy-like for business usage & sharing large collections of
documents/files.

~~~
pfg
You can add shared folders (as in folders other people shared with you) to
your Drive through this page: <https://drive.google.com/#shared-with-me> (or
click on Shared with me on the Drive site). Click on the folder and then on
"Add to My Drive". It will even get synced to your local disk. You can also
download the whole folder (right-click).

Spent a long time looking for this, they should really work on the UI for this
feature.

~~~
spinchange
I was referring to publicly shared folders w/ non-Google users. If you don't
have a Google/Drive account and someone shares a link-accessible folder, it
can be viewed and items downloaded piecemeal, but there is no option to
download the entire folder.

Link-accessible Box.net folders don't have this constraint. You can share a
folder link w/ someone who doesn't have an account and they can download the
entire folder w/o creating one. Google only let's you view the contents and
download one-at-a-time. Your work-around is good to know, but you'd have to be
sharing with another Drive user for it to work.

------
davidweir
With javascript disabled or on a text-based browser, there is no content on
that page. What price accessibility?

------
Executor
It would be cool if I could have all this data hosted on my web
server/computers. Why give google your data?

------
yanw
_Pro tip: This change means you’re no longer limited to a 25 GB upgrade in
Gmail—any additional storage you purchase now applies there, too._

------
godgod
Google is evil. Google is nothing ore than another mechanism for the US
government to spy on us further enhancing the police state. They are in bed
with the NSA and are directly benefiting from their incestuous relationship
with the federal government. Look at their recent endeavuours. Google
glasses,illegal wifi sniffing, google plus, google fiber, andriod phones, TOS
changes, youtube requiring your full name, storing of google searches. They've
found a way into every aspect of our lives and thoughts. Wasn't it their
mission statement that stated: Google don't be evil? Ya right.

Anyone know how to prevent googlebot from spidering my comments? I don't want
an IRS audit.

~~~
ramblerman
"Anyone know how to prevent googlebot from spidering my comments? I don't want
an IRS audit."

Unplug and go live in the woods. Everybody wins.

------
helloamar
So now all the photos on google plus, Picassa are brought into accounts, that
will eat up the bunch of space.

