
Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over? - bane
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-drive-coming-soon/34052/
======
mattmaroon
When I was in YC (same batch as Dropbox) this was a constant question. "What
happens to Dropbox if Gdrive launches?" I don't actually remember what Drew
and Arash thought, but a lot of people speculated on it.

It was probably a real threat to them 4.5 years ago. I can't imagine it is
now. Dropbox has a large, happy fanbase that's going to keep using it and keep
spreading. They're going to keep growing. They've got a small bit of lock-in
if you use them a lot too, the annoyance of having to upload a large amount of
files to another service. They've got a product that's a joy to use, which is
not something Google is known for building outside of their core competency of
search.

If I were Dropbox I'd simply view this as market validation (not that they
need it at this point) more than anything else.

~~~
jpdoctor
> If I were Dropbox I'd simply view this as market validation

And if I were Dropbox, I'd worry like hell. Google isn't depending on making
GDrive profitable from fees, so they can literally give it away.

~~~
patio11
You'd be surprised how difficult "giving it away" can be, even for Google.
Google succeeded big on giving away email, search, and androids. Do I need to
list up all the acquisitions and products that even with a mortal lock on
navigation on the Internet Google couldn't convince people was worth at least
$0?

~~~
jpdoctor
Dropbox can take the approach of not worrying if they want. Standing on years
of head start perhaps.

However: File sync strikes me as a lot closer to email than <insert failed
acquisition here>.

Additionally, it seems logical to build/ship GDrive right into android.

I say again: I'd worry like hell.

~~~
rohitkumar
Agreed. File sharing is the type of thing where you can't just rely on first-
mover-advantage. Google has the ability and infrastructure to offer more space
for free on more devices and platforms.

~~~
dreamdu5t
Dropbox's success isn't about hardware. The interface is the product.

~~~
jonknee
And really it's their lack of an interface--it just works.

~~~
Macsenour
I WISH I could remember who said it, but I applies here and in so many other
areas: You must offer the consumer something MUCH better than what they
already have to get them to switch from something they like. Google Maps dis
this when Mapquest was the standard.

Does GDrive do that? Not yet.

~~~
PyErr_SetString
I agree with what you wrote mostly. What dropbox could do to mess up and give
Google a chance to do something much better is this: don't give people more
free space when the average user struggles with the 2GB limit. One of the
things that made gmail a success was that hotmail and the rest cheaper out on
space. People had to constantly clean up their 2MB mailboxes. Google might be
able to do the same again if dropbox don't offer more space for free. But that
would take away from their earnings, so it isn't an easy problem to solve.

------
petenixey
Dropbox is a brilliant piece of software however it's hard to justify more
than $10/month for backup as a consumer. Since 50Gb only now covers my photos
and docs, doesn't cover my music and even my photo collection's needs trimming
to fit I would move to GDrive very quickly rather than double that spend to
get to the next tier.

I've long hoped that Dropbox would segment their pricing plans more. It's
unsettling having an increasing volume of content not backed up and if GDrive
really does deliver I would move to it. My loyalty is to DB and I've yet to be
convinced on GDrive's usability but it doesn't make sense to pay an extra
$100/year as a loyalty fee.

~~~
esutton
in the dropbox forums company representatives constantly comment that lower
price plans are not feasible. That said, I've always been disappointed by
companies that make you buy buckets of units (like postpaid cellphone plans)
that they know you will never use rather than offering a per unit price. If
the cost to provide 1gb of storage per month is higher than 10/50, than charge
the higher price, don't hide it by shifting the cost of power users onto
regular users.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I do believe them that lower prices are not feasible while they are reselling
Amazon S3... this GDrive rumor might be the push Dropbox needs to bite the
bullet and buy their own servers.

~~~
kooshball
They definitely need to buy their own servers at some point in the future. I
do remember storage is their main cost. With the big round they just closed, I
can't imagine there's not a few engineers working on that already.

------
nhebb
As a rule of thumb, I try to rely on Google as little as possible for
important services. I don't dislike Google, but their lack of customer service
makes it risky to rely too heavily on their services. I use Dropbox for
syncing and backup, and since I backup files that are important to me, that
rules out Google Drive.

~~~
thenomad
This. Unless Google suddenly become a lot more customer service focussed, I
really have no intention of using their service to back up all my stuff.

~~~
rscale
If customer service is important to you, DropBox isn't a viable option either.

------
libria
This is unexpected given their position on it before [1]:

 _Google was about to launch a project it had been developing for more than a
year, a free cloud-based storage service called GDrive. But Sundar had
concluded that it was an artifact of the style of computing that Google was
about to usher out the door. He went to Bradley Horowitz, the executive in
charge of the project, and said, “I don’t think we need GDrive anymore.”
Horowitz asked why not. “Files are so 1990,” said Pichai. “I don’t think we
need files anymore.” ... “You just want to get information into the cloud.
When people use our Google Docs, there are no more files. You just start
editing in the cloud, and there’s never a file.”_

Are they admitting they were too ambitious? This seems to weaken the case for
the mostly file-less ChromeOS and competes with their Google Storage offering.

[1] [http://allthingsd.com/20110425/how-google-killed-gdrive-
and-...](http://allthingsd.com/20110425/how-google-killed-gdrive-and-spiked-
its-skype-acquisition/)

~~~
tlogan
Excellent find. In my company we really don't have files: everything is
"cloud" (we use Google Apps and a little of box.net) and that seems as a
future.

If this is true, I will be a little irritated because Google is not fixing
simple things in Google Docs (like that stupid thing that all new documents
are immediately saved as "Untitled" without even asking me what would be a
name of documents). Now they are building something completely unrelated to
what they were telling us.

------
Corrado
I love Dropbox and Google Drive would have a hard time getting me to switch.
Dropbox seems to "get it" when it comes to simple, easy to use file
synchronization.

The one area that GDrive might wiggle into is making it even easier to use
Google Docs. I really like GDocs but I don't use them very much because its
just not convenient to do so with local files. However, if I can "upload" a
file to a directory on my machine and have it available in GDocs, that might
turn the tide.

NOTE: One thing that Dropbox doesn't do well is file segregation; some files I
want only on some machines. For example, I want me personal finance stuff on
all my machines at home but not my work laptop. Or I want large ZIP archives
on everything but my phone. Maybe GDrive will tackle this problem...

~~~
T-hawk
_One thing that Dropbox doesn't do well is file segregation_

Dropbox does do that. In the preferences, each folder has a checkbox for "Sync
this folder to this computer"; uncheck it and the folder won't be on that
device. It's marginally clunky to set up since you have to do it for each
folder on each device - it doesn't have a higher level abstraction like "no
large zip archives" - but the functionality is there.

~~~
Huppie
The trick here is that Dropbox has introduced this feature pretty late and
only if you run the installer now (on a new machine perhaps) you'll notice the
feature is there because the installer will ask you if you want to sync
everything or selectively.

If I remember correctly, the older clients don't update to new versions
automatically (or at least this was the case a year ago) and you will need to
download a new client to make this feature available.

------
Murkin

      Google X: Is the Y party Over?
    

I think I seen this on HN about 4 times in the last year.

Is there any front where google managed to beat a good established product
(except Android) ?

Only good thing to come out of this, is a hopeful price reduction on Dropbox..

~~~
Groxx
Only 4? I don't think you've been watching very closely. Though maybe after
deduplication...

And yes: Chrome (massive bite out of both IE and Firefox's share), email
(Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc, take your pick), and mapping being the big ones.
You could probably toss in online document editing and machine-translation
too.

Google seems to do reasonably well with taking over _tools_ , and less-so for
taking over primarily-user-friendly applications or features. I'm not sure
Dropbox has much to worry about.

~~~
eavc
You could probably add Picasa, Reader, Virtual Voicemail / Google Voice,
Calendar, Video Chat, Instant Messaging as well.

~~~
Groxx
Yeah, though they haven't really dominated any of those sections - I
considered a few, actually. Picasa for instance is decent and moderately used,
but Flickr and especially Facebook are way way larger in almost every respect.

Their calendar is the best online calendar I've found, but nobody I know uses
it except Google-aware geeks and the ones I've taught (they love it now,
didn't know it existed before). And online calendars haven't really reached
public-awareness or usefulness yet, it seems - the closest most people come to
computer calendars is their work's shared calendar that runs through Outlook.

Instant messaging they've certainly impacted, but I _think_ AIM and MSN and
Yahoo individually still out-number Google, though that may change with Plus.
And Skype dominates video and voice chats, though Google is a _threat_ (again,
depends on how Plus pans out).

edit: Though Voice is incredibly awesome and absolutely dominates in its niche
- of course, it's the only contender. But nobody knows how to use it, and its
user-base consists of a laughable amount compared to <random national
telecom>, AFAIK.

~~~
eavc
Agreed that the market penetration is still limited for many or most of those
things, but I imagine Google's offering has made a disruptive splash to more
than a few companies.

~~~
Groxx
Yeah, we agree there :) I, for one, like the disruption - even if Google
doesn't do it better, it spurs changes.

------
Eliezer
It's sad, because I remember when the name meant something else, but... I just
wouldn't trust Google with my files. By which I mean, I wouldn't trust that I
wouldn't wake up one day and find myself locked out of Google Drive with no
way back. I don't trust their user interface not to accidentally delete
things, either. Google manages to give the appearance of this mysterious
Tronlike glowing entity that occasionally spins off new automatic services,
but not in a way that gives you the impression that this glowing manifestation
of Google has ever talked with a user.

~~~
PotatoEngineer
On the plus side: what are the odds that you both get locked out AND you
desperately need your backups on the same day? They're both unlikely events.
(You might want sync, but hopefully you won't need the backup due to a hard
drive crash or some such.)

Of course, if enough people use the service, then statistically, it will
happen several times.

------
Jun8
I think services/sites can be divided into two when considering how/if people
switch between them: (i) _aggregate sites_ whose value is a (generally
nonlinear) function of all users who use the site and (ii) _personal sites_
whose impact is just for the person who uses it. The fact that I'm using
Dropbox, too, doesn't provide any value to you (except of course economies of
scale)

YouTube, Flickr, YouTube, etc. are Type I sites, it's hard to switch from them
to competitors because it's hard to do it individually, a large majority of
the users must switch, too, creating a chicken and egg problem.

Google Search, Dropbox, etc. are of Type II. You use these sites just because
they are better than the competition. As soon as this is not the case, you,
individually, can easily switch. You may call these commodity sites. That's
why Bing is such a big threat to Google, and Dropbox is doomed if Google comes
up with cheaper plans and sync clients as good as theirs.

That being said, one shouldn't assume that Google will dominate any market
they enter, they have the _capability_ of doing do, but in practice this may
not happen: putting too few people on the project, wrong design decisions,
crappy clients, etc.

~~~
brlewis
You may be underestimating the prevalence of Dropbox shared folders, which
make Dropbox into more type I.

~~~
Jun8
Good point, I haven't thought about that. I wonder what percentage of content
is shared, though. But this suggests one important strategy for Dropbox, they
should immediately put more emphasis and develop better tools for content
sharing to make their service more sticky fro people.

~~~
brlewis
I don't have any numbers, but for a qualitative review see
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3044351>

------
kenjackson
Here is the fundamental problem of competing against Google as a SW company.
Google is an advertising company, as everyone now well knows. They have no
problem selling SW cheap, or giving it away for free, if they can help their
advertising business (either directly by hosting ads in the service, or mining
data from the service for info to help target ads).

If you feel like your SW has actual value and charge for it, but Google has
you in their cross hairs, you either really need a great product (that can't
easily be cloned) or very strong network effects.

While I think DropBox is a great product, and harder to clone that most people
give it credit for, Google I think is the type of company that could actually
nail a DropBox clone. And with GMail, Docs, and Android integration -- could
be a serious force.

I must admit I'm a bit saddened that the actual value of so much good SW is
~$0.

~~~
jroseattle
"If you feel like your SW has actual value and charge for it, but Google has
you in their cross hairs, you either really need a great product (that can't
easily be cloned) or very strong network effects."

Let's substitute the names of Netscape and Microsoft circa 1997 and see how
this plays out.

I can't wait to hear all the reasons why the Google/Dropbox comparative
scenario is so much different.

~~~
Elepsis
Is your argument that Google should also be taken to court by the Department
of Justice and submit to one of the largest antitrust settlements in American
history?

~~~
jroseattle
Just an "observation".

You would have to ask the DOJ about anything else.

------
artursapek
As a subscriber to additional storage with Google (20 GB, $5/year) I'm really
happy to be reading this because it will allow me to fully use the space I've
paid for. I believe it was the cheapest option when I subscribed and while I
have crossed the free storage limit I have yet to fully use 20 GB.

I originally signed up for it because I was sporadically transferring a lot of
high-res scans between a computer which my school owns and my own laptop, so a
permanent dropbox-like folder would not have worked. Now I'll also be able to
back up my music/photos dropbox-style with the same service. Smart move by
Google for hitting both services, although it's kind of sad to see such a
great startup being approached by the web's behemoth.

~~~
brlewis
Your assumption (also the assumption in the article) is that the pricing won't
change after it gets easier to fully use the space.

~~~
artursapek
I would be really shocked if Google charged for a service like this, it fits
in with Docs and Gmail which have both always been free and have made storage
space easier to fully use. If anything, they will profit off of it by people
investing in even more storage with them.

~~~
brlewis
Docs and gmail let you slowly fill available space while being exposed to
Google Ads. A Dropbox clone would let you fill available space quickly without
ads.

~~~
icebraining
Gmail has POP3, IMAP and SMTP for free without ads.

~~~
brlewis
Yes, and GMail for mobile is ad-free. On average, though, I would expect more
storage+bandwidth costs per ad impression from a GDrive user than from a GMail
user, if GDrive turns out to be similar to Dropbox.

------
crocowhile
I keep having problems with Dropbox lately, with files that aren't synced and
lots of conflicted copies. Not sure why but made me realize that Dropbox has
been offering pretty much the same service for years now. Granted, the service
was great from the beginning but: are they improving enough to remain
competitive?

~~~
pestaa
Completely agreed. Right now the most requested feature is "watch any folder".
It received the most upvotes by a great margin (30%). And it was suggested 2
years ago.

Yet there is no indication of development at all on that front (or any other
for that matter.)

I really like Dropbox, but seriously will look into GDrive too.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
"Watch any folder" would greatly clutter the beautiful ui and conceptual
model.

~~~
pestaa
It's a small price to pay when making _all_ the users happy.

------
dorkitude
Dropbox is a dominant product because they understand user experience.
Google's in-house products are, increasingly, failures because they don't.

* Of course, there are a lot of smart people at Google. It's not that there aren't _Googlers_ who understand user experience, it's that the Google _organism_ rejects their intuition and refuses to understand it. They methodically optimize UX to a local maximum, and throw up their hands when nobody is impressed, like a Vulcan trying to compose music.

------
abcd_f
Alright, now. Pay attention to the existence of paid option.

The fact that GDrive has a paid option indicates that they are aiming directly
at Dropbox. If they were offering a completely free option, it would
implicitly make GDrive fall into another category thus increasing its distance
from Dropbox. I would also guess that Google can _easily_ make GDrive
completely free, these $5 / 20Gb is not likely to be breaking or making it for
them. It is a just conversion facilitator. Furthermore consider their selected
price point - it means that they want to remove all doubts when one compares
two paid services and to _strongly_ entice Dropbox users to switch.

<tinhat>Google Docs must be not working as great as they would like it to.
People are still not using it for interesting documents of some value, and
that's a bummer. Let's try and get to these documents another way...</tinhat>

~~~
anothermachine
Google Storage for Mail/Photos/Docs/etc has been charging $5/20Gb for months
already. This isn't a special GDrive thing. At this point, GDrive would be a
UI cleanup for the existing content sync services they already have, not a new
service.

------
marklabedz
If this means I can combine the seamless syncing and "available anywhere with
an internet connection" of Dropbox, with the convenience of being able to make
easy edits in Google Docs if I don't have access to MS Word, I'm all for it.

~~~
esutton
google docs already does this with cloud connect

~~~
marklabedz
Unfortunately not when using my MacBook Pro unless I've got Win7 up in a VM.

------
reidbenj
Google doesn't necessarily squeeze out all competitors in any industry they
enter, but they do raise awareness. In some sense this is great for Dropbox
because I would guess well under 50% of computer users even know cloud storage
services like this exist...but many more will if Google enters the market.

The problem, of course, is if they all learn about it through gmail and Google
captures them all, but I think that underestimates Dropbox's ability to
counter.

Lastly, don't discount human laziness aiding Dropbox customer retention - time
is a switching cost here.

------
esutton
i remember hearing the same argument when google made google videos to compete
with youtube, and we all know how that ended. That said, there were social and
community aspects there that don't apply here, and google's cheaper storage
prices and larger feature set may give it a leg up.

~~~
jinushaun
It's dangerous for Dropbox because GDrive will be automatically integrated
into all Google services. I can access it anywhere from any Google service or
device. No need to think about uploading, downloading, copying, pasting--it's
just there. I don't use GDocs because it's the best.

I use it because all my friends use Gmail and sharing docs with them is super
easy. I see GDrive having the same benefits. Sharing on Dropbox still isn't as
easy as it should be. I've been trying to convince my girlfriend to sign up
for a Dropbox accounts since we started dating, but no luck. With Gdrive, she
will never need to.

That said, success is still not guaranteed. MS has had SkyDrive for years and
I have no idea what the market penetration numbers are, but I'm sure they
aren't good. Hotmail is no Gmail. I had no problems convincing a bunch of
people to switch to Gmail, but only got one person to sign up for Dropbox.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Can it be scripted though? I want to set up a cron task to gzip a directory
and send it to GDrive every night.

~~~
esutton
if its a desktop program like dropbox with a synced folder, you can write a
script to place the gzip in the synced folder, and then it will sync
automatically

~~~
MatthewPhillips
That could work, hopefully it's a 1 way sync though. I don't want all of the
contents of my cloud storage to be pulled down to my server.

~~~
esutton
you can use selective sync

------
crag
I (we) use Google Apps. I'm assuming this would be another service. If we ever
see it. Right now, it's vaporware.

It took me months to "train" everyone in the office on how to use Dropbox. -Ok
stop laughing. I'm dealing with doctors here. :) I know doctors who can
perform open heart surgery but can't use iTunes.

Anyway I'd rather not go through that training nightmare again. Google is
gonna have to do something really impressive.

~~~
mtogo
Erm, it's not vaporware. GApps has had this feature for years now, they're
just rebranding it as google drive to compete with dropbox.

------
re_chief
I dunno. I've been using Dropbox for years now, I've got it set up on all my
computers, and as of right now I don't really have a pressing reason to
switch. Gdrive would have to offer up something new and amazing before I'd
want to change over. (And it would have to be something other than lower
prices, because I don't back up enough stuff to have to pay for additional
storage.)

------
0x12
Should dropbox worry? Sure, _not_ worrying would simply be stupid.

Should they be mortally afraid? No, probably not. Dropbox has a lot going for
them, and one of the biggest things they've got going for them is that they
are _not google_.

They can specialize, they can do one thing and do it well and they just had a
huge company validate their market for them.

Look at omniture vs analytics of how that can play out.

------
nickgonzo
I'd love to see Dropbox open up their platform for developers to build
applications on top of it. Seems like that could entail all sorts of things,
such as solving the friction between using web apps with large files, or
groups of files. Imagine dropping files in a folder and then being able to
manipulate them on the web, and save them back to your folder seamlessly.

------
gravitronic
After the scare stories I've heard regarding gmail lockouts (and not just on
news sites, yesterday someone I follow on twitter was temporarily locked out
of their gmail for receiving a number of files quickly) I'm more inclined to
continue using services that would not all get shut off with my gmail access
being locked for a single ToS breach.

------
tomelders
It's in areas like this that Google sometimes oversteps the mark and veers
dangerously close to "being evil" territory... in MY opinion.

As I see it: Dropbox innovated, and they innovated well. It's inevitable that
competition would arise, but competition on the scale Google can offer could
well mean total annihilation for Dropbox, if annihilation is what Google
pursues.

Google doesn't "need" to enter this market. And yes, I know that there's no
rule that says you have to be nice... but it feels crappy to me. Dropbox has
earnt it's success, and Google could easily let them grow and secure their
future before releasing G-Drive. Google is in a position to be something of a
patriarch in the tech world as opposed to eating it's young.

If I was working on a Dropbox competitor yesterday, today I'd be finding
something else to do. That's bad for innovation.

if G-Drive actually exists that is.

~~~
shahidhussain
Any company - big or small - is going to enter markets where they think they
can make an impact. I don't think it's about being nice to smaller companies
(and BTW, Dropbox isn't that small any more). It's about what's the best fit
for users, and having the market decide the winner. If Google make a product
that can't compete with Dropbox's ease of use, they'll flounder, as have many
Google products in the past (Buzz, Notebook, Dodgeball, Lively, Answers and so
on). Sure - big companies have advantages of scale and cross-promotion, but
small companies have advantages of speed and lack of bureaucracy.

Competition is good for users, and arguably good for companies too. Nice just
doesn't come into it.

~~~
tomelders
It wasn't good for users when Microsoft put Netscape out of business, and It
wont be good for users if Google puts Dropbox out of business.

------
tlogan
Is this credible news? Building GDrive seems completely incompatible with long
term vision of Google (Chrome OS, Android, etc.) (at least vision implied by
listening their earning calls).

Also sync'ing with local storage means allowing users to use non-Google Docs
editors (MS Office) and all these cool collaboration things Google Apps are
useless when you move in Gdrive mode.

Maybe building a good iphone/Android app to edit google docs online would be
better investment of their talent?

And, on side note, as cloud storage becomes integral part of our lives, the
companies which will win are not the cheapest one. But the ones with the best
customer service and quality of product.

~~~
benblodgett
I agree, I was speculative when I read this. Google is making a push for a
cloud based OS - so why would they roll out a product based on local file
syncing?

Perhaps, this is a transitive product that will eventually be the foundation
for Chrome OS file storage?

------
miles_matthias
Two thoughts:

\- I don't think the Dropbox party is over, and won't be for a while, because
of non-techies. Dropbox is drop dead simple and non-technical people have
gravitate to it and won't see much of a reason to switch. Also, Google has so
many different products now, sometimes when you mention Google to non-
technical people they get an overwhelming deer-in-the-headlights look.

\- As a technical person, I am excited to hopefully have more online and
offline document editing capability with Google Drive. Back when I had a
Blackberry, Dropbox's app allowed me to edit files through the app, but with
my iPhone app, I can't edit files on my Dropbox.

~~~
artursapek
_sometimes when you mention Google to non-technical people they get an
overwhelming deer-in-the-headlights look._

That's interesting, I've never seen that. I always thought Google was the most
beginner-friendly corner of the internet.

~~~
DanBC
Bing tv adverts suggested that Google wasn't providing user friendly search
results. So maybe there is some huddle of people who just can't cope with
Google?

~~~
artursapek
Yes, Bing is a direct competitor of Google.

------
chapstickblue
Well at least I hope they lower the super ridiculous high prices and make it
more like $4 a year per 15 GB.

They seem greedy to me. They seem to want to be able to retire and not have to
work anymore if they wanted after the dropbox startup.

------
est
> Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over? Yeah, because Google will put a
> really nice effort making cross-platform client software like Dropbox does

Look how pathetic Google Talk desktop client is.

Is the Google Talk client really complex piece of VC++ shit that Google can't
spare some decent develope from tens of throusands of genius employees?

------
brianobush
Dropbox made it so I don't even think about it. My files are just where I need
them. That is the amazing part: make it so that you don't see it, but it is
always there.

I think they have a pretty broad-base and google entering the market validates
the business model. Though, their prices might drop a bit.

------
ak217
By the way, to my knowledge dropbox doesn't provide drag-and-drop of files
into and out of the browser window, which I see as kind of a key feature for
this type of service. I know it's possible because gmail lets you drag-and-
drop an attachment into a message in chrome...

------
gto16108
Dropbox has a pretty large amount of users who are more than happy with the
functionality of the application as it is. With more added features to come in
later years, I think Google won't just steal the market with a Google labeled
cloud drive.

------
kasmura
I am excited about this. Competition in the market is good for innovation and
the price.

------
mhoofman
Google needs to provide very simple native syncing apps that are equivalent to
or better then Dropbox's and at the same time support several different
platforms out of the gate to draw people away from Dropbox.

~~~
brlewis
Yes, and that's an awful lot of work. More likely they'll launch something
less functional than Dropbox, but good enough to slow Dropbox down a little
while Google focuses on competing with Facebook.

------
jroseattle
Only by making Dropbox a lucrative acquisition target to someone else.

------
missing_cipher
Don't think I'll be leaving DropBox, but redundancy is nice.

------
dorkitude
I expect GDrive to compete with Backblaze and Crashplan (cheap + inconvenient
compared to Dropbox), but its effect on the Dropbox userbase to be minimal.

------
cjoh
The reason I'll use dropbox over google drive? I'll store my files with a
company that makes it's money from fees vs one that makes it's money from ads.

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itswindy
Huge benefits for G Drive! For example they will even scan the contents and
let you know /IRS about any tax discrepancies for example.

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nestlequ1k
my dropbox account was deleted without warning or notice, so i guess im ready
for something new

~~~
nestlequ1k
repro steps: 1) have a dropbox account 2) join a company that uses dropbox
teams 3) leave that company 4) poof, account disappears

~~~
brlewis
That's one serious bug. Have you contacted Dropbox about it? What was their
response?

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Poyeyo
What will kill Dropbox?:

Some similar product where we can install and manage our own servers.

~~~
rokhayakebe
That won't kill it for my mama.

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nextparadigms
I hope they'll give the option to do your own encryption, too.

~~~
wccrawford
Since one of the main features of GDrive will be to share files between Google
Apps, I doubt that's plausible.

There's nothing stopping you from encrypting each file before upload, but then
that file won't really be usable with Google's apps.

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protomyth
If Apple or Microsoft introduce a competitor to your application, you are
going to have a real difficult time staying in business. Are we to the same
point with Google and cloud apps?

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macca321
I thought Windows 8 was going to kill dropbox

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yotamoron
I guess it won't take too much effort to get the Google username from that
screenshot and just ask the guy ... any volunteers ?

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vaksel
personally I expect the GDrive to be a bit of a failure, and Google will do
what it always does...use it's massive cash reserves to buy Dropbox.

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DrJ

        Google Drive: $5 per year per 20 GB.
        Dropbox Pro 50 plan, $10 per month for 50 GB
    

"the price of Google Drive looks dirt cheap." wait what?

~~~
andrewhare
Google Drive is $5 per 20GB _per year_. I'd say that's a pretty significant
difference.

~~~
DrJ
haha, that's what I get for staying up late.

