
Hey Google.  You should compete with Dropbox. - kentf
http://kent.posterous.com/wheres-my-g-drive
======
oldgregg
Look for the G-Drive in 2012 or 2013. It will be a piece of engineering genius
that nobody will use. Over-engineering is Google's achilles heal and Dropbox
is exploiting that brilliantly. Microsoft and Apple are irrelevant-- they are
committed to closed platforms and they haven't demonstrated any competency
otherwise. Dropbox should be a textbook case for how scrappy startups can
compete against the behemoths.

Edit: Dropbox biggest competition seems to be the shift from file systems to
apps. A Google acquisition seems most likely. Personally I think Apple should
snap them up for deep integration with iTunes/iOS. It could be a perfect
marriage, but it doesn't seem like a very Apple thing to do.

~~~
oiujhygtfyhjuk
Google would make it free - but trawl all your data to send you ads.

Apple would make it apple only - which is kind of irrelevent to 99% of people.

Microsoft would just do it sooooo badly.

~~~
xorglorb
Well, Apple already has iDisk, which is Mac/iOS only and Microsoft has
SkyDrive, which I've heard performs horribly, so it's already happened, except
for google.

~~~
TobyS95
Apple's iDisk is not Mac/iOS only. Any WebDAV client can access it. I use it
on an XP machine without any extra software. In fact, using an open standard
like WebDAV is probably the reason for iDisk's performance issues. Any WebDAV
"disk" I have ever connected to has had performance issues.

------
3pt14159
Why wouldn't Google just buy out Dropbox? Anything they need to build wouldn't
be _that_ complicated (what, selective syncing is hard? Isn't there a unix
util that did that decades ago?) and they would have the advantage of a honed
conversion funnel and solid wom marketing.

~~~
user24
Why would Google buy dropbox? How does it fit with their established
advertising business? How does it feed into their other offerings?

Your claim seems to be "dropbox is profitable, therefore Google should buy it"
- Ben and Jerry's is profitable but I don't see it as a potential Google
acquisition.

Dropbox is built for a time when the desktop is still relevant. Google are
gearing up to overthrow that paradigm. Dropbox doesn't have a clear link to
the web at large, or to search, or to the creation and indexing of content.
Those are the attributes I associate with "google acquisition fodder". Compare
tineye.

If Google do buy dropbox, it'll be as a talent acquisition and/or so they can
leverage the userbase into a chrome OS based solution.

~~~
brg
What would you think if you were told an offer was extended and rejected?

~~~
user24
I would think the same - that it doesn't fit into their current offerings and
that the offer was made so they can get the talent and use the userbase to
feed into a future web-os offering.

Did that happen?

edit: Just read some of your comment history. So why do you think the offer
was made?

edit2: I mean, ok, say I'm google and I'm thinking about buying dropbox:

We can index the user's documents and provide a kick-ass search interface as a
product feature, as well as pushing existing products like google docs.
Indexing will also feed into advertising across the board, if the user's
logged in to their Gbox we can make any adverts they see relevant based on the
contents of their own files, which will potentially create an awesome
relevance to the user thus increasing CTR and revenue.

I guess that's a pretty convincing argument actually...

~~~
brg
I am bound by paperwork to not comment on any actual first hand knowledge, and
can not find external sources to point you at. But before it was deprecated,
getting Google desktop on every desktop was a priority. Some of those goals
are still being pursued.

------
dstein
As much as I love Dropbox I have a feeling they're gonna get squished by
competing products from Google, Apple, and Microsoft that integrate into
mobile platforms.

~~~
stcredzero
I suspect that Apple is already out to completely redefine the Memory
Hierarchy. In the process Dropbox will get squished or redefined out of
existence.

I was thinking today: If persistent Flash memory has RAM-like characteristics,
why are we still treating it like it's a _spinning disk_? Laptops and mobile
devices should have a completely different memory hierarchy:

    
    
        - Registers
        - L1 and L2 cache
        - Main Memory 
        - Persistent Memory
        - Cloud Memory
    

The 1st three are also what we have today, but the last two are completely
new. Persistent Flash stores are faster but more expensive than spinning
magnetic platter. Cloud Memory is vaster and omnipresent, but much slower and
less reliable than the hard drive. Together, they can fill in each other's
weaknesses and create something vastly more useful than the old spinning hard
drive.

Apple is moving in this direction with their new Macbook Airs, which have
taken the first step by taking the MLC Flash chips out of the pointless metal
box and placed them on a form factor somewhat like a DIMM. They have moved
even further with the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad. Here, we have computers as
powerful as workstations of the mid-1990s, but there is almost no notion of a
Disk Drive. Instead, files are organized primarily by the Apps that create and
manage them.

My prediction is that Apple is moving toward a world (at least for the average
user) where there are only Apps and your data magically takes care of itself.

EDIT: Does anyone else also realize that a big reason our lengthy boot-up
procedure even exists is because we had to have a spinning disk? Now that we
have RAM-like stuff that's cheap enough to use in spinning-disk quantities, we
don't really need the kinds of boot-up procedures we have now.

~~~
neilc
_If persistent Flash memory has RAM-like characteristics, why are we still
treating it like it's a spinning disk?_

I'm not sure we are (other than low-level details like how the kernel does I/O
scheduling and filesystem implementation details). RAM is transient; SSDs and
magnetic disk are both persistent. Hence, both SSDs and magnetic disk can
serve as stable storage. SSDs and HDs have different performance
characteristics, but I'm not so sure that a radical rethinking of the storage
hierarchy is actually called for.

 _a big reason our lengthy boot-up procedure even exists is because we had to
have a spinning disk_

Offhand, I would guess that a big reason for lengthy bootups is the time
required to probe, detect and configure hardware (plus latency stuff like BIOS
init). An intelligent OS will be able to arrange the disk I/O that needs to be
done on startup so it is mostly sequential; SSDs and HDs are not significantly
different with respect to sequential read performance.

~~~
stcredzero
_RAM is transient; SSDs and magnetic disk are both persistent._

Wow, somehow I missed this fact after 30 years of programming!

 _both SSDs and magnetic disk can serve as stable storage_

Yes, but sometimes a quantitative difference can result in a qualitative one.
(Like branching and merging and using historical information in Git. The fact
that you can do this so quickly from the local Git repository means you can
use it in ways that wouldn't be practical in something like Subversion.)

 _Offhand, I would guess that a big reason for lengthy bootups is the time
required to probe, detect and configure hardware_

Why doesn't this apply to hibernating laptops? (Or for that matter, the iPad?)
In this day and age, to we always have to turn the power 100% off on a regular
basis? Also, there are experimental OS like EROS, where there is no boot-up,
only a reactivation of certain facilities like network cards.

The lengthy boot-up process is now living on a set of cultural expectations.
There is no longer a technical reason for its existing.

~~~
neilc
_Wow, somehow I missed this fact after 30 years of programming!_

Yay for sarcasm. My point is that changing the performance characteristics of
the lower levels of the storage hierarchy does not necessarily mean we need to
make radical changes.

 _The lengthy boot-up process is now living on a set of cultural expectations.
There is no longer a technical reason for its existing._

Maybe so; my point was just that I don't see how SSDs vs. magnetic disk
fundamentally effect the boot-up process. Hibernation vs. power-off is
orthogonal to the type of storage used.

~~~
stcredzero
SSD can also have lower power requirements. Combine SSD with the cloud, and
you can have something which can respond faster to the typical user while
eliminating any thoughts about storage size and backups.

If you just treat the Flash as RAM, with volatile RAM as a very large L3
cache, the notion of hard drive can just disappear. Everything just becomes
orthogonally persistent.

I'm guessing this is a troll. Most programmers I talk to in person just get
this without so much exposition.

------
jedc
Google doesn't have a Dropbox product, but Google has put together a series of
APIs so that you can create a similar product of your own off their
infrastructure.

<http://code.google.com/apis/storage/>

It was presented at Google I/O 2010; though perhaps it didn't make as big a
splash considering everything else that was discussed there. Here's the
session page on it:

[http://www.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/google-
storage...](http://www.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/google-storage-for-
developers.html)

Then again, I might be mis-understanding what the OP is asking for...

~~~
trotsky
Not really about the point you were making, but...

Google seems to be aiming this at enterprise customers looking for essentially
a private cloud SAN. Their fees otherwise seem quite high.

Lets compare pricing:

    
    
      Google: .17/G storage .10/G in .15/G out US/EU .30/G asia
      AWS <10TB : .14/G storage .10/G in .15/G out US/EU .20/G out asia
      AWS =100TB: .14/G storage .10/G in .07/G out US/EU .11/G out asia
      Loss leading CDN: as low as .10/G storage - .01/G in - .01/G out US only (new customers only)
      Biggest video CDN =250TB: ??/G storage - .10/G in - .10/G out US ??/G out asia
      Managed DFW colo =2TB: 250G storage free - .21/G in - .21/G out worldwide
      Carrier hotel rack 100mb/s 1yr: ~.10/G storage ~.06/G in ~.06/G out worldwide - ~.02/G out citywide
    

Obviously services offered vary - but the only player google is beating on
price is rackspace with their entry level commit, but the colo also gets you
~4ECU's, dynamic content and 24hr phone NOC.

Google competes with AWS at the low end but once you scale amazon wins by
50%-66% or more. Akamai beats google by 33% with a sizable commit but that
gets you on net at ~1000 edges and a great SLA. Google won't even tell you
where your content is - except that it's US only.

I think this is only being marketed at applications like b2b sales force
hosting, data heavy scientific apps and enterprise offsite backups. You'd get
killed trying to use them for a consumer service. I mean $0.30/GB to .au AND
high latency?

The irony is that google's real operating costs are probably the lowest out of
any of the players at least for US delivery. Their backbone enjoys tremendous
scale based on their search & ad traffic and everyone peers with them.

------
snagage
I'm surprised that google is really slow to move on this. Our organisation has
already been using Google Apps for a year or so and want to replace our
network shares. With all our user accounts and email groups, Google is in the
best position to do execute yet the lack of good solutions means we're likely
to look elsewhere.

There's a couple of third parties that integrate with Google Docs, but none of
them fit the bill from some quick internal tests. Gladinet - unreliable with
certain functions. Insync - still very much "beta" mode; no folders, no
business plan options.

~~~
vdm
This!

I'm using Google Apps in an SMB, and it's great for zero-admin, but
downloading attachments to a download folder, finding them again by filename,
doing 'save as' to avoid filename collisions so you can save changes, is a
total pain in the ass. And we still need a network drive. We still use Google
Apps in spite of this but handling file attachments seems unnecessarily
difficult. And no, Google Docs is not a solution. Not all attachments are
.docs, some of us use CAD files.

Dropbox, fully integrated with Google Apps and Chrome's Downloads folder,
would mean the end for millions of intranets.

------
jwr
I sincerely hope they don't.

Google has made a habit of entering new markets with products priced at 0,
destroying competition. In classical economics this is called "dumping", and
the only reason they can afford it is because of the huge cash cow that is
online advertising.

I would much rather have a healthy ecosystem with many smaller companies
competing with paid services (you know, paid, with terms of use, support, and
all that), than yet another free service from google and works except when it
does not and there is no one to turn to in case of trouble.

------
sdz
Why would a cloud-based filesystem be useful beyond storing your home folder?
It's not like you need group collaboration on your kernel binaries. You also
can't really run different computers off of the same harddrive image (unless
you are a corporation and buy multiple, identical machines).

------
brianobush
I don't think dropboxing an entire harddrive is required. Case in point: I use
dropbox for my school files, personal docs, etc and it works wonders. Copying
my copy of /bin/bash is kinda pointless.

------
jasonlotito
Posted a reponse over on my blog, but figured I'd post it here as well in case
you didn't find it (mostly because no one reads it. =))

\--

Kent asked “Where’s my G-Drive?” where he pondered what it would be like to
have your computer dropboxed (verbing the noun). He went on to dream of a time
when your computer was essentially just a thin client connecting to a remote
server run by Google, and a all your data was stored there. He listed off some
really cool use cases, and then went on to explain why they weren’t a
possibility yet. Bandwidth, privacy, space, etc.

But he’s thinking small. He’s also not ignoring some fundamental human
concepts, and also why Dropbox is successful.

First, let’s look at why Dropbox is successful: automatic syncing. I can be on
my computer, move to my iPhone, and still have all the files. Move to my
laptop, and the files are there as well. You can even log onto their website
into your account and access your files.

None of this is data backup. It’s all syncing. Once you realize _why_ Dropbox
is successful, you realize what you are actually looking for. You are looking
for a device that intelligently syncs your data across all your devices
without needing to sacrifice bandwidth, eliminating privacy concerns, and not
requiring massive amounts of storage.

So, let’s move on, and discover what _the_ service will be that takes the
throne.

First, it will focus on syncing intelligently. This doesn’t mean syncing
everything all the time, but syncing what you use. There are things my iPhone
can’t open that I sync via Dropbox. It’s useless to download this. It’s also
useless to sync this over the web when my phone and computer are on the same
network. So, the idea is to sync, but only when needed. Sync-on-Read.
Bandwidth here is an issue, sure. But only in speed, and frankly, when your
living in an era when streaming HD movies is a reality and common place, it’s
not a big concern. Let’s just say, Sync-on-Read is no more a problem then the
current Sync-on-Save model currently in place. Also, once something is synced,
it can be stored locally.

Next, since you only sync when you read, that means you need to connect to
machine that holds the data. The downside here is that you need to connect to
your home machine to access the data, and the machine needs to be powered on.
But, I venture to guess that anyone using a system like this would keep their
computers on anyways. After all, a computer shut off can’t sync regardless. Of
course, you could also ensure that the system will figure out where it can get
the file. If I have a file on multiple machines, and the main machine is off,
the software can still grab the data.

The benefit to this is you still get to store you data locally. Local storage
isn’t going away. People want their data. Sure, they want backups, but if
their internet goes down, they don’t want to lose access to the data. And
adding more data to the system is easy. Just add another hard drive like you
do now. Also, the service provider need not store the data remotely. They just
need to keep track of your various machines, and make sure machine A can speak
with machine B. This eliminates privacy concerns. Instead of worrying how much
disk space to rent, you just handle it yourself.

Essentially, you turn this from a push environment into a pull. You aren’t
handed data, you ask for it. The service provider would manage things like
figuring out which file is the latest copy, and keep track of local copies in
case something changed and you didn’t want.

Kent’s original plan was “Install G-Drive, Tell G-Drive which files to sync,
Wait 3 days for the magic to happen, That’s it.” In my plan, the idea can
essentially be “Install G-Drive” and that’s it. Take your phone with you, and
have access to the file. Technically speaking, it’s not incredibly difficult.
It’s making the workflow easy. Dropbox easy.

Who will deliver this? Apple has the best opportunity to do something like
this. They have the complete infrastructure, from hardware to software, to
handle something like this. Controlling the entire pipeline, it’s really just
a willingness on their part that is needed. Consider for a moment that they
already have MobileMe which handles a lot of this. Microsoft can do this. Live
Mesh and SkyDrive were initial attempts at this field, but still, it’s not a
complete end to end solution like what I discussed. Google, if anything, is
the one company farthest behind on this. They have various services, like
Picasa, that already handle online storage. The problem is syncing everything
together across the OS. MS and Apple both have their own operating systems and
phone platforms they can use to bring it all together. Google is missing out
(and while Android is awesome, it’s missing it’s older cousin, a Google OS
that is actively being pushed).

Could Dropbox deliver? Maybe. At the software end, I think they could pivot
fast enough and release a product like the one I discussed quickest. Will
they? I don’t know. They’d have to charge for the service, and would someone
want to pay for this? I would. A couple bucks a month to have all my computers
synced like this easily would be nice.

I’d love to leave everything at home, and go, and not worry about forgetting
to sync up the pictures this Christmas while I’m at my mother’s. If I want to
show her videos, I shouldn’t have to plan that in advance.

Cloud storage is an excellent idea, don’t get me wrong. But I’d much rather
have proper syncing first.

\--

[http://blog.jasonlotito.com/uncategorized/whats-better-
then-...](http://blog.jasonlotito.com/uncategorized/whats-better-then-kents-g-
drive/)

~~~
chc
This entire idea of pull syncing is based on the premise that Netflix works,
so bandwidth must be almost unlimited. But video streaming is a special case,
in that the content is specifically engineered with streaming in mind,
unlikely to be randomly accessed (but amenable to the procedure if it is), and
streamed from a central server. Other content types often require the entire
thing to be read before the data is useful. Also, most people's Internet
connections have pretty lousy upstream (mine at home is about 14 KB/s, and at
work it's about 200 KB/s).

~~~
jasonlotito
Pull syncing wouldn't use any more bandwidth then "push" syncing. As I
mentioned, the only downside is the upload speed for most ISPs is much worse
then their download speeds. However, you have this same problem with push
syncing. The only difference is that for push syncing, by the time you need
it, it's most likely already been pushed up, and then down again.

I mentioned two things that solve for this:

1\. Local network syncing. Much of my syncing occurs between my desktop and my
laptop. Syncing shouldn't require an outbound connection (send up to dropbox,
send down from dropbox).

2\. Beyond large media files, most files people want to sync are still fast on
high speed internet. Most pictures and documents aren't large enough to be a
concern.

Finally, while most people's internet connections might be lousy, then they
will suffer with the syncing regardless of the method used.

So yes, I do realize upload speeds are an issue, but it's not a big problem.

~~~
chc
I think that "only difference" you mention is pretty crucial given the
limitations we're talking about. If it's sync-on-save, then it's syncing while
I'm doing other stuff. If it's sync-on-read, then it has to sync _when I need
the file_ , which can take a nontrivial amount of time. Looking at my desktop
right now (which is just random stuff I happen to have received in the past
couple of days — pictures grabbed off cameras, files emailed to me, etc.), I
see that 10% of the individual files are over 10 MB and 25% are 1 MB or more.
My browser's icon cache takes about 10 MB. Firefox itself is 53 MB. That's a
heck of a launch time at 14 KB/s. A 1 MB file on my home computer would take
more than a minute to open at work even if I use 100% of my home upstream.

~~~
jasonlotito
> I think that "only difference" you mention is pretty crucial given the
> limitations we're talking about

Yes, it's a problem. A problem I talked about in the original post. However,
it's temporary problem, and only for people that have to suffer with slow
internet. For these people, even download speeds are horrible. Steam, for
example, as wonderful as it is, is hated in places where download speeds
suffer.

However, global internet speeds are increasing.

For me, I can stream my music and videos from my home to work. While I don't
for a moment hide behind this problem, I won't pretend it's a road block.

Simply put: it's a problem as much as people without internet wouldn't be able
to use it either. Enough people can use it that it would be useful.

------
ma2rten
I don't see the point. Why would you want google too host your hard drive ? In
my book it has only disadvantages.

------
sachinag
OK, I'll bite. I will do a long bet that Dropbox either 1) IPOs or 2) has a
$750MM+ exit by 2014. I can't guarantee that Dropbox IPOs the way that LogMeIn
did, but the $750MM hedge is there to say that Dropbox is worth more to Google
than Yelp was.

------
stcredzero
Apple: Hacker/tinkerers start turning netbooks into little OS X boxes.
Eventually, Apple comes out with the 11" Macbook Air.

Google: Hacker/tinkerers start using their Gmail storage space as a cloud
storage utility. Google does nothing. Eventually a 3rd party comes out their
own solution with a brilliant additional twist, which becomes massively
successful.

If I were Apple, I'd come out with my own Dropbox-like service and call it
something like "Warp Drive." (Ansible? Wormhole?) I'd have it sync accounts on
different laptop/machines based on about a dozen different "plans" which are
never presented as a list to the user, but only suggested, based on their disk
use. (Along with one or two options to "downsize" the plan.)

A "plan" for me might go like: store everything on the Mac Mini, because it
fits there, and sync everything to the 256GB Air except the Movies directory.
(Which will be available anyways through streaming like AirVideo does it.)

~~~
rdouble
Apple already has a Dropbox-like service.

<http://www.apple.com/mobileme/features/idisk.html>

~~~
stcredzero
I tried it years ago. It wasn't 1/5th as good as Dropbox!

~~~
rdouble
I use both. iDisk is pretty good for what it is: a webdav drive. Sometimes I
just want a place to dump and retrieve files, not sync them. The sync model
used by Dropbox is sometimes problematic. I just bought a new Macbook Air and
don't want to sync all my Dropbox files, but I do want access to them.
However, there's currently no way to selectively sync files. In this scenario
iDisk actually works better. Also, the iDisk iPhone app is really nice.

------
trotsky
quoted:

 _Privacy: There will be problems. Enough said._

I've also heard that death valley gets a bit warm in the summer.

------
brady747
insynhq.com seems close to this (available on google apps
marketplace)...perhaps google prefers to allow (charge) vendors to utilitize
their storage and not have to worry about the customer service and software
side of things...

------
jagbolanos
I found Insync they apparently want to create a DropBox over Google Apps
insynchq.com

