
Google Drive leaks suggest 5GB free storage, in-app document editing - fint
http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/30/google-drive-leaks/
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eggbrain
I remember when Gmail first came out to the public with a whopping 1GB of
email storage, 50-100 times what the competitors were offering[1]. It was a
great, streamlined mail experience that users flocked to immediately, leaving
Yahoo Mail and Hotmail in the dust.

If this leak is true, it will be one of the most underwhelming releases by
Google in quite a while. 5GB? That's 2.5 times what Dropbox gives you for free
(and they've been giving 2GB away for years), at parity with Amazon Cloud
Drive (in 2011), and 1/5th of Microsoft's SkyDrive (25GB).

What happened to the Google that would release products that really rocked the
boat?

[1] <http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/gmail.html>

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Kylekramer
If pure higher storage numbers are the way to rock the boat, wouldn't Dropbox
be one of the least impressive options and everyone would be praising
Skydrive? There is clearly much more than just greater bytes equals greater
storage service. Even if Gmail only offered a similar amount of storage as
Yahoo/Hotmail when it launched, it still would have been a leap forward for
its interface alone (though the lanuch would have lost some of its punch,
obviously).

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lomegor
I think Google has a major opportunity here by integrating this to Google+ and
Circles. File sharing would become really easy.

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yalogin
Looks like they are matching Amazon's offering. Even though Amazon has not
released an API to its cloud drive (its only a matter of time before they
will).

Dropbox really should have sold to Apple when they had a chance. It will be
interesting to see how iCloud and these new offerings impact their adoption
rates. Looks like Box did a better differentiation by going explicitly after
the enterprise integration.

~~~
hcurtiss
Agreed. I would not have believed it if you told me three years ago, but
box.com is positioning to significantly outpace dropbox in the enterprise
space (i.e., the pay for service space). I work with banks and law firms.
Dropbox is perceived as the devil (though I don't think it's as bad as our IT
admin makes it out to be). On the other hand, many have formally adopted a
branded versions of box.com. Crazy.

~~~
oneplusone
Box has very confusing pricing for personal use. Why limit file size? Makes no
sense.

They are also 2x times as expensive as Dropbox. $20/month only gets me 50gb on
box.com, whereas I get 100gb with dropbox. And no annoying file size
restriction.

Dropbox teams also seem like a much better deal.

~~~
hcurtiss
Frankly, in my experience, it's all about perceived security. That and the
utility of setting permissions for third party access with read/modify logs.
It's kind of like Merrill's data room, but web 2.0'y and faster/more user
friendly.

Dropbox was easier (I loved being able to right click a zip file sitting in my
public folder), but our clients told us it was too risky to have a document
sitting on an open live link without password/user access control. We're
currently using sendthisfile.com, but I believe we're moving to box.com soon.
We're a top end AmLaw 200 firm.

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Dylan16807
5GB? I expected there'd but some kind of limit but I didn't expect them to set
it smaller than gmail.

~~~
pasbesoin
If true, I suspect this is part of their apparent move to a more paid-service
model. This has been happening with Google Apps, where they've increasingly
obscured the free/Standard/whatever-they're-calling-it-now level, have reduced
the user cap for that level most recently from 50 to 10, and are promoting the
paid business level more heavily including e.g. on the sign on page for
(just/plain) Gmail.

5 GB for free. Or sign up for Google Checkout, erm Wallet, erm... What's-It-
Now (Play?), and get more space.

Could be wrong. But that's my off-the-cuff read, if the information is
accurate.

That said, 5 GB might be plenty for the casual, Gmail-type user. Also, I'd
like to know whether it is a separate allocation; since it is less than the
current "free" allocation for Gmail, I'm assuming so.

P.S. One could also compare this amount to the per user quota in Google Apps
free/Standard/erm level. I'm not recalling what that is, right now -- 5 GB
(which would match this, WRT documents), or 15 GB. IIRC, the Apps quota
includes email storage.

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rdl
I would be so much happier with a free 5GB product plus paid extra capacity
than a free huge capacity which generates no revenue and thus gets neglected
like every other non core Google product.

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pasbesoin
Just to be clear, I meant my comment more as observation that critique
(whether favorable or unfavorable).

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notatoad
I'm still skeptical. These rumours have been around for so long without
anything ever surfacing, it seems unlikely that anything ever will.

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renegadedev
Here's my wishlist:

1\. OS and platform agnostic

2\. Easy to use

3\. High storage at least on the paid version

4\. Secure

5\. and above all, an unequivocal guarantee from Google that they won't "peek"
into my files just to show ads on gmail or search based off this info, even in
the free version.

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lallysingh
Considered rsync.net? I was pretty happy with them, but got burdened enough
with slow-uplink home networks to have to drop them as my backup provider.

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res0nat0r
Rsync.net always looked cool but is way too expensive at .80c/gb. I can use
duplicity and do incremental backups to S3 and encrypt with gpg all in one
command for much cheaper.

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toomuchtodo
<https://nimbus.io/>

Almost public release, and $0.06/GB.

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nthitz
Drive needs: 1) increased storage space for a fee and 2) the ability to grab
files from an FTP server somehow. I'm in for sure then.

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crdoconnor
1 is dead certain. 2 is a bizarre request, and you're probably the only person
who'd want that.

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wavephorm
Well it better have a Linux client, and not require a web browser to be logged
into Google+ all the time. Otherwise it'll be another G-fail.

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deelowe
Almost all of Google's products work over the web. The whole "cloud" idea is
kind of their thing. Google uses a single login for almost all products now
(the same one that's used for G+). Why in the world would you think that they
would somehow regress and create a separate login for this that doesn't
require the browser?

That said, nothing Google's done has forced people to use G+ when a browser
isn't required. So, again, why would you suspect that they would do something
like that?

If this comes with a client, I seriously doubt it's going to require that you
log into G+, but the login you use will be the same one you use for all other
Google products I'm sure (G+ included). If it has a browser interface (which
I'm sure it will), then I can assure you it will use the same login that's
used for G+ just like almost all of Google's web apps.

