
I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface - ovidem
http://googledrivesucks.com
======
dendory
He was unlucky and didn't think things through too much, especially when
dealing with such imporant files, but I agree with him that the way it's
implemented is silly. If you provide a program that syncs your documents, with
the name of your files, to your local system, people expect these files to be
your actual documents, not empty links. Every other online storage system
works that way. If you move a file out of your skydrive or Dropbox sync folder
you have the actual file, not an empty link.

~~~
nollidge
But how could that possibly work for a document that's edited in a browser?
What file format would such a document be stored in when there's no local
editor available for it?

~~~
crazygringo
Who knows? I don't know the internals of my Word or Pages documents. Why
should anyone care what the internals of a .gdoc file look like? It could be
anything. But nobody expects it to be a mere "pointer" link.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I don't know the internals of my Word or Pages documents. [...] But nobody
> expects it to be a mere "pointer" link.

While Word and Excel (and plenty of other kinds of non-cloud document) files
_usually_ contain data _besides_ links, and _sometimes_ contain no links, they
can contain content which is non-obviously (from visual inspection) provided
through a link which is broken if the file is moved. And, unlike gdocs, you
don't usually get a warning when you drag them out of the folder which tells
you _exactly_ what is going to happen if you do that.

~~~
gknoy
When you drag something out of your folder on your local machine, how does
gdocs give you a warning? (I'm curious, having never tried it.)

~~~
FigBug
I'm assuming there is a background process that monitors the folder for
changes. On my machine there is about a 3.5 second delay between moving the
file and getting the warning. And if you click "OK, move to trash" it only
trashes it in gdrive, you still have the file wherever you moved it. It's not
a finder dialog box and can get lost behind other windows. It's bizarre UI.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I'm assuming there is a background process that monitors the folder for
> changes.

I would assume its the same Google Drive background process that _syncs_
changes made to files in the folder back to Drive, just using special handling
for the case of "you moved a file that is a link to content in a Google web
service and rather than a normal file".

------
cldr
While I sympathize with the author (it must have hurt pretty bad if it made
him go create an entire website dedicated to "google drive sucks") I thought
it was quite obvious that files created on Google Drive with their document
editor were not actually copied to your computer with the Google Drive
program. It's easy to see when you try to open the file with Notepad or a
similar local text editor. Additionally you get a warning when you move a file
out of the Drive folder which you should always heed.

Not only that, but if it were the actual file on your local drive and not a
link, there wouldn't be an option to "make this file available offline". There
were cues which the author missed, but they were obviously not prominent
enough which is a (the) design flaw.

Let this be a lesson that you should have multiple backups for anything
important. I personally have 2 online backup systems and 3 local ones, the
worth of which practice I learned the hard way like this author.

Also think twice before you empty the trash - you're _manually_ making these
files _unrecoverable_ from the internet, and if your machine went up in smoke
after you hit the button, you'd be screwed. That alone warrants serious
consideration.

~~~
jchung
Glad you thought it was obvious. I just learned it after reading the OP's
article. Not obvious enough, apparently.

~~~
cldr
Yeah, like I mentioned, "There were cues which the author missed, but they
were obviously not prominent enough which is a (the) design flaw." I focused
more on the lessons to be learned but the situation is absolutely very sad for
anyone who goes through something like this.

Glad you read the article though, now you're not going to fall for this flaw
in the future.

------
jerrya
If I take _real_ files (.doc, .cc, .py) in a folder on my computer and move
them into my google drive folder on my computer, Google Drive syncs those
files to the web. Now my _real_ files exist, sync'd, in two places. My local
disk and Google's disk.

If I take Google Doc files I have created in the browser and drag them from my
google drive folder on my computer, into another folder, I get a file named
the same as the document I had created that basically contains a URL. My gdoc
files still only exist in the cloud. What I have in my hand is bupkis. So what
are gdoc files? They certainly aren't _real_ files and few people understand
that they are worthless outside of the Google Drive folder.

No one expects this is how document dragging to or from folders works.

When dragging gdoc files out of a folder, there needs to be someway for Google
Drive to give you the actual file from the cloud.

------
carlesfe
I feel really, really sorry for OP. However, since Google closed my adsense
account without any serious reason, I learned not to trust them, so I keep
backups of every service I have with them.

I'd recommend anyone who uses Google Docs to download a zip file of their
Drive weekly, and if possible, use some of the backup tools like [Insync].

Overall, I agree that the Google Drive interface is not totally clear about
what the disk files represent.

[Insync]: [https://www.insynchq.com/](https://www.insynchq.com/)

~~~
zhodge
Would you say Insync is worth the $10 if I only have one Drive account that I
want to back up? They do offer backups, right? Their site seems to advertise
multiple account sync as its biggest feature.

------
blcknight
Huh? If you remove the files from the copy of Google drive on your disk, they
get removed on the web. It's one "drive." That's KIND OF THE WHOLE POINT. It's
not poor user design.

That they go to the trash is good user design, to prevent users from doings
things like this guy did...

~~~
nailer
Yeah, I don't get this part. The user moved the files from google drive to his
local disk. Aren't the files therefore still on his local disk?

EDIT: re read article . Moving files into local disk deletes them on google
drive and makes the moved versions useless links. Now agree with the author:
that's goddamned terrible.

EDIT 2: actually the files are always links, but if the links are moved
outside google drive the correspondi go data is moved into Google drive trash.
See jamesaguilar below. Still goddamned terrible.

~~~
jamesaguilar
No, the files in your drive "look like" they are files, but they are actually
just links. So him moving them to the local disk did not actually copy the
files to local disk.

The real failure here is that you shouldn't be able to move the drive links
out of the drive folder, since semantically that does not actually move the
files.

(Filed a bug, but I'm not on the Drive team so I can't really take
responsibility for this getting fixed. It does seem like a problem to me, but
I don't know their infrastructure nor the limitations of shell extensions, so
I can't really comment on whether a fix is feasible either.)

~~~
was_hellbanned
> The real failure here is that you shouldn't be able to move the drive links
> out of the drive folder, since semantically that does not actually move the
> files.

Or stop trying to force a connection between Google Drive's file view and
Google Docs.

Move the _links_ out of GDrive all you want, it should have _no_ effect
whatsoever on the hosted GDocs. They're just links, after all. Since when does
moving or deleting a link delete actual data?

Someone at Google tried to force a connection that doesn't even make sense,
and this is the result. Whoever decided that moving a _link_ out of a folder
should delete the hosted document should be fired.

~~~
scholia
Well said...

------
Osiris
If he has the local copies of his documents from the local Google Drive sync,
wouldn't he at least have that backup, or are the local files not really files
at all but just pointers to the cloud storage files?

If it's the latter, does that mean that's it's literally impossible to make
backups of your Google Docs documents? If I were to use a another backup
program to backup my Google Drive folder, it wouldn't be possible to restore
those files if the Google Drive files got deleted?

~~~
pyk
It looks like indeed it's the latter -- the .gdoc files are just pointers, and
moving them out of the google drive is akin to copying the pointer/shortcut...

But, more than that, moving the .gdoc file pointer out of Google drive moves
the actual cloud file to the trash? That was my best guess after re-reading
the OP, and that does seem like a UX issue. From a UX point of view, moving a
shortcut to a file should not move that file to the trash somewhere else.

------
tytso
If files weren't completely deleted when the trash was emptied, then people
would be kvetching about the horrible security implications and the only way
to be sure was to keep files on the local disk so that when you emptied the
trash, the files would be _really_ gone....

~~~
ajross
This is surely true. It's also true that real world data loss is worse than
nonsense internet flaming.

I think the arguments can be dumb too, but the guy actually lost files here.
And it's the kind of mistake I could see myself making pretty easily. In other
contexts you protect against this with non-local backups (ironically, that's
probably 90% of my usage of Drive), but there's no equivalent in the cloud
world. It's a real issue that needs to be addressed, I think.

~~~
vdaniuk
Yeah, there are many back-up equivalents
[https://www.cloudhq.net](https://www.cloudhq.net)
[https://mybackupbox.com/](https://mybackupbox.com/)
[https://mover.io/product/backups](https://mover.io/product/backups)

And And those who lost their file will blame the UI. I understand the
frustration and how terrible the poster feels but this anecdotal argument is
irrelevant to the actual safety or UI quality of Google Drive.

There will always be users who lose their data due to glitches, technical
illiteracy, bad design etc. There are literally dozens, maybe hundreds of
million Google Drive users.

The lesson that can be learned here is this: Your personal data management
system should never have a single point of failure.

Disclaimer: I was a Googler sometime ago but wasn't anywhere near the Drive
team.

~~~
ajross
Again though: the real issue I see here (not the giant UI rant or the Google
is Evil nonsense) is that cloud-managed content like Google Docs _cannot be
backed up_ meaningfully. I think that's a real problem, and until it's fixed
other people are going to be tripping over the same issues.

~~~
vdaniuk
Yeah, I agree thats its not really intuitive but you _can_ back up cloud
managed content by converting it in various formats for export.
[https://www.google.com/settings/takeout/](https://www.google.com/settings/takeout/)

------
mlntn
As bad as I feel for the OP, you have to take responsibility instead of
blaming Google. Seems like they do a good job of explaining when you empty the
trash in Drive:

"Files in your trash are about to be permanently deleted, including Google
Docs in your Trash. Warning: When using Google Drive for PC/Mac, Google Docs
aren’t actual files saved on your hard drive; they are links to files stored
online."

If you want a real backup of Google Docs, try Takeout:
[https://www.google.com/settings/takeout](https://www.google.com/settings/takeout)

~~~
dmak
It's just very unintuitive and it deviates from the popular and most accepted
paradigm. I would think Google drive syncs your actual files, and that it
would just choose Google Docs as its default editor.

~~~
dragonwriter
Google Drive syncs actual files.

Google _Docs_ , however, does not provide "actual files" with substantive
content for its native documents, you have to export them to other formats to
have "actual files".

------
woof
The "poor user interface" gave me a dialog window with a warning and two
buttons:

An item you recently removed from your Google Drive folder has been moved to
your trash on drive.google.com.

This item is just a link. If you empty your trash on drive.google.com, this
item will be permanently deleted.

"Ok, move to trash" "Undo"

~~~
mikeash
None of which really spells out that the "file" you moved out of Google Drive
doesn't actually contain anything useful. That's what "This item is just a
link." is supposed to tell us, but that's just terrible wording. What exactly
is "This item"? I work with files, not items. What is "just a link"? The only
"link" I'm familiar with for files are symbolic links and hard links, and that
doesn't apply here.

------
300bps
Google definitely jumped into Drive and Apps without putting any thought about
privacy or recoverability into it whatsoever. There's a reason why they keep
launching in beta - because they get an MVP out the door and then people start
using it as if it's ready for production.

Further, everyone I know that uses Google Apps / Drive has no idea how to use
it properly. One common thing I see is people will send a link to a particular
document not knowing they've unwittingly given the person access to all of
their documents. One person sent a link out to a spreadsheet that had a beach
house signup in it. A couple of clicks in the unfamiliar user interface and I
find myself looking at the filenames of all his docs - one of which was
potentially very embarrassing. For his sake, I didn't mention it but only sent
him an article later on about how to secure your Google Drive files.

~~~
Oletros
> One common thing I see is people will send a link to a particular document
> not knowing they've unwittingly given the person access to all of their
> documents

What? Share links for documents are just a link to that document no to the
folders where they are

------
casca
Everyone hates making backups. Everyone loves them when something happens.

There are many free online data storage systems. If you're happy with the
privacy implications, it's not hard to run Google Drive, Dropbox and box.net
on the same directory for some degree of resilience.

~~~
FigBug
You can't make backups of gdoc files, the content is never stored locally,
it's only on googles servers.

~~~
woof
[https://code.google.com/p/gdocbackup/](https://code.google.com/p/gdocbackup/)

------
dmak
There's a marketing opportunity here for Dropbox. "Dropbox, we sync all your
files, not just the links to them."

~~~
dragonwriter
Drive syncs all your files, too.

The various Google Docs, etc., web apps only put links to the real content in
Drive, however.

Any file that you created with a method that would let you store it in Dropbox
will be synced the same way in Drive as it would be in Dropbox, the only
difference is web apps that are tied to the Drive UI that don't store their
substantive content in Drive in the first place, which obviously Dropbox won't
help with. (Conceptually, you could have web apps that do the same thing in
Dropbox, though I don't know if the Dropbox API and Web UI have features that
would make it attractive to do.)

------
vxNsr
Honestly dude, I always check my recycle bin before emptying it for this exact
reason: I never know what I accidentally put in there, and I will almost never
do a full delete, I'll go in there and remove things in groups.

------
lsb
Yes, if you have no backups, and never restore from your backups, and just
rely on a free service keeping all your things for you for all time, things
might go awry.

------
RankingMember
I don't know of any backup service that doesn't work this way unless you
explicitly tell it otherwise (e.g. a "Never Delete" option).

~~~
mikeash
No backup service in the history of the universe gives you non-working local
"files" that are just links back to the cloud when you attempt to copy a file
to your computer.

The problem is not that Drive deleted his stuff on Google. The problem is that
Drive deleted his stuff on Google _after taking an action that should have
left him with local copies of the data, but didn 't_.

------
arielserafini
I get it, it sucks that this happened. But does that make Google Drive "suck"?
The author himself states he has used it since the service started - that's
what, 6 years? I agree that what happened was unfortunate, but it's a bit
immature to go around badmouthing the entire product because of this. It's not
like this happens everyday for every single user.

~~~
bighi
Google Drive started in April 2012. It's been a year and a half,
approximately, not 6 years.

~~~
arielserafini
He mentions using Google Docs from the start, which eventually became Drive.

~~~
mikeash
The problem he encountered is part of Drive, not Docs.

------
zaroth
They try to warn you, but the warning message doesn't make any sense, unless
you already know what it's trying to say.

    
    
       "An item you recently removed from your Google Drive folder has been moved
       to your trash on drive.google.com.
    
       This item is just a link. If you empty your trash on
       drive.google.com, this item will be permanently deleted."
    

See how the meaning of the phrase "this item" actually changes from one
sentence to the next?

You can't actually write a decent warning message, because if you did, it
would sound so ridiculous, you would never actually be able to live with it.

    
    
       We noticed some files have been removed from your Google
       Drive folder.
    
       We can't tell the difference between you moving files
       from your Google Drive folder to another folder on your
       hard drive, and you simply deleting files from your
       Google Drive folder.
    
       We're going to guess that you performed a delete, and so
       we've also moved the actual document, which is stored in
       the cloud, to your Trash folder on drive.google.com.
    
       If you actually moved files out of your Google Drive
       folder to another folder on your hard drive, you might
       think that file you have on your computer is a copy of
       the source material. Alas, it is not.
    
       Please understand that file you may have on your
       computer right now is just a link to the item in the
       cloud, which is currently sitting in the Trash. You
       DO NOT actually have a copy of item itself on your hard
       drive.
    
       If you empty your trash in the cloud, you will be
       permanently deleting the only copy in existence of this
       item.
    

LOL...

Make it as as simple as possible, _but no simpler_.

Conflating hyperlinks with the actual content to the point where deleting the
hyperlink causes the content to move to the trash is nonsensical.

------
thezilch
Nope. [http://i.imgur.com/ijTQTTq.png](http://i.imgur.com/ijTQTTq.png)

~~~
ash
Users can't read.

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000062....](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000062.html)

~~~
thezilch
Yes, sure, but that's not a reason for me to not use Google Drive. In fact,
the "Empty Trash" in Google Drive has a similar prompt [0]; how many clues
does this guy need? I have not seen a filesystem do better, so we're all ears
on this magical UX that doesn't involve alerts for destructive actions. Evil
Google!

[0] Empty Trash? Files in your trash are about to be permanently deleted,
including Google Docs in your Trash. Warning: When using Google Drive for
PC/Mac, Google Docs aren’t actual files saved on your hard drive; they are
links to files stored online. Learn more You can’t undo this action

------
eono
There is an export feature, which allows you to export "all" your data you
have stored on Google's server incl. Google Docs (which will be exported to
Word, Excel, PowerPoint formats, respectively). In your account settings there
you can find "Download your data".

Doing regular backups even of your data in the cloud is in my opinion a
crucial action, since everyone trusts fully into the cloud provider to provide
his data always, anywhere and forever, which is - as you experienced - a
dangerous and naive assumption.

------
nollidge
Man, I don't know. I feel for this guy, but not every computing tragedy is the
software's fault. The author never says what he expected would happen when he
moved stuff out of the Google drive.

I learned along the way never to make assumptions about how file syncing
works. There's no right answer to what to do in all situations, so your
expectations aren't always going to match what the programmer/product owner
decided to do.

~~~
mikeash
Virtually everyone would expect that, when moving stuff out of Google Drive,
the stuff you moved would actually contain stuff.

There's literally no precedent for any other way. You move a file, and the
file you moved still contains the same thing. That's how it works everywhere,
including with all other file syncing services.

------
dClauzel
Remote volumes are not new. They don't replace backups.

As the author said: "I didn't think anything of it". Nothing to add :)

------
subsection1h
Wow, I'm amazed by the number of comments written by people who apparently use
Google Drive without having researched backup solutions. Interesting. Here are
my notes on the subject:

[https://github.com/josh2/google_drive_backups](https://github.com/josh2/google_drive_backups)

------
koko775
Well, he deleted years' worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user
interface, but he _lost_ the Google Docs files because of an irresponsible
backup policy.

Sad, to be sure, but there's no kind of critical document storage that doesn't
need a backup.

~~~
crazygringo
But there is no way to backup Google Docs files, is there?

What exactly was the "responsible" backup policy supposed to have been?

~~~
woof
Something like
[https://code.google.com/p/gdocbackup/](https://code.google.com/p/gdocbackup/)
combined with another backup (on physical media or in the cloud).

------
SippinLean
Why didn't the user backup all their Docs using Google Docs built in "Convert
and Download All" tool?
[http://i.imgur.com/AnOAIw9.png](http://i.imgur.com/AnOAIw9.png)

------
ovidem
I wrote a followup Medium post on the implications of Google's interface
design:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6608719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6608719)

------
ozten
We've become so heavily dependent on Google, it is kind of sad that the
author's email (listed at the end) is a gmail.com address.

~~~
print
Came here to say the same thing. It takes the piss out of his argument.

------
Oletros
Google Drive does that Dropbox does that Skydrive does that

All of them have poor user interfaces?

~~~
ndewitt
I have a Skydrive synced folder on my computer. Files I put in there are
copied to Skydrive. If I remove a file from that folder, it is still a
physical file on my computer. Google drive local "files" do not contain your
data. I don't know about Dropbox.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Google drive local "files" do not contain your data.

Google Drive local files do, in fact, contain your data, for any files that
you put into Drive.

The issue is that the native files for certain web services that use the Drive
interface (including Google's own Documents, Spreadsheets, etc.) are just
links to content stored with the web service, not containers for the content
itself.

------
lurkinggrue
He should have kept a backup. Possibly some sort of cloud backup system.

------
lazaruz
which is why I have a hazel rule that copies any document that is added to my
linked cloud drive folder to a NAS

------
chadpaulson
File a FOIA request and get your data back from the NSA.

Is this a thing?

~~~
eli
Yes, but it's really not a great idea. It takes away resources that could be
used to answer FOIA requests that might actually result in responsive
documents.

------
xsighted
if the files were ever synced to your computer, you might be able to recover
them using software that can undelete files. Personally, I'd just use dropbox
... it's dead simple.

~~~
FigBug
Google drive doesn't actually sync files, just links.

~~~
dragonwriter
Drive actually syncs files.

The Google Docs (and Spreadsheets/Forms/etc.) native files are, however, links
to online resources that are manipulated via an API, not document files in the
usual sense.

------
atoponce
So, let me get this straight. You moved everything to Google Drive, not
keeping a local copy. Then you emptied the trash. And you didn't have a backup
of your documents, but instead decided to leave everything in the cloud. Then,
when something goes wrong, you blame Google. Am I understanding correctly?

~~~
FigBug
Nope, not understanding it at all. He moved files out of his google drive, but
the files aren't files, just links to the cloud. So even though he still has
the files, they have no data in them.

~~~
atoponce
But, still no backup? Files only exist in Google Drive, and no where else?

