

How Google Killed GDrive and Spiked Its Skype Acquisition - rpsubhub
http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/20110425/how-google-killed-gdrive-and-spiked-its-skype-acquisition/

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bane
_“Files are so 1990,” said Pichai. “I don’t think we need files anymore.”

Horowitz was stunned. “Not need files anymore?”

“Think about it,” said Pichai. “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.”_

Color me stunned too. I just took a vacation to Italy and my camera sure has
heck didn't push 40GB of photos up into the cloud on some random wifi
connection that didn't exist where I was at that very moment, so that I could
then saturate the nonexistent bandwidth pulling them all back down again for
viewing and editing (or panorama stitching).

This is actually the #1 use case for me that prevents me from traveling a few
pounds lighter with just a tablet. I need lots of storage for photos.

I'm half playing with the idea of just getting a big dropbox account for
traveling and just push all my photos up at the end of the day. A 50-60GB
GDrive would have been great had Google offered it.

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noibl
I think the GDrive cancellation in particular highlights a real problem at
Google: the tendency to have a much clearer idea of what they want users to be
doing than of what users want to do.

Generic cloud storage could be a great bridge between the way the vast
majority of people are used to working with data (as files) and the plethora
of online services that can make that data useful in (to the user) unforeseen
ways. But because the Google future is so dazzling, it's not enough to step
into it. One must leap.

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yanw
I disagree, the 'no file' approach is the forward looking one, beyond DropBox
type thing. Why sync files to local machines when they are already accessible
through the cloud? that's the 'leap'.

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noibl
I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with.

Edit: I think I understood the rationale but it's blinkered. It's Google's
business to find out why such transitions are difficult or unattractive to
users and to smooth the way. To answer your question, why sync, an example is
data portability. While most computer users have never heard the term, they do
have an intuitive understanding of the kinds of problems that can happen when
you don't have a local copy of your stuff, as almost happened with the Google
Video screw-up. Whether problems like this are real or permanent isn't the
most relevant fact, it's that people experience them.

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yanw
If I understand correctly you suggest that it was a mistake not having
launched GDrive as a gate-way service to their 'no file' vision, but I agree
with their approach to focus on developing the services that will eventually
remove the need for files.

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arfrank
This is essentially just 2 small excerpts from the actual book, and a short
video interview.

Here are two other excepts (from a previous HN article) of the book that also
link to a free preview of the first chapter.

<https://kindle.amazon.com/post/1EJFN69GTE3AN>

<https://kindle.amazon.com/post/2BJ69NQFHGN1P>

I'd recommend reading the preview even if you don't plan on buying the book
right now. But getting this book in multiple small excerpts doesn't really do
it justice.

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cantastoria
Given how well DropBox and Skype are doing this doesn't say very much about
Google management. I'm surprised Pichai and Chan still have their jobs.

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jonknee
Considering the crooks that run Skype, Google got real lucky on that one. Just
ask eBay.

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cantastoria
I blame eBay for that one. Not actually acquiring the underlying technology to
Skype was pure idiocy on their part. I don't blame Skype one bit for taking
advantage. My point was that apparently Craig Walker having kids in school and
lawyers saying it would take months for the deal to go through was enough to
kill a deal that had a high chance of success. I understand Chan was
protecting his territory but shame on Google management for going along with
it.

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akarambir
In this argument, i'm with pichai and chan. They just did the thing that
google is known for. Google is best when it create a web-app or any enterprise
from its store. When they acquire something they are most likely take the
different approach then the original thinking of that company. This in most
cases fails to scale and integrate that app.

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neworbit
Pity. I think Google might have done better with Skype.

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rafski
The crazy idea that files are obsolete reminds me of how Skype thought that
the old multiwindow communicator paradigm needed replacing and forced Skype 5
on disgruntled users.

Skype insists they see the future while users keep downgrading to 2.8

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spinchange
These size limitations are pretty 1990
<http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=37603>

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DanielBMarkham
I'm 2/3rd of the way through the book right now, and I vacillate between being
ready to ditch the book altogether (for cheerleading Google too much) and
continuing on in horrid fascination (Mayer announcing basically that design
was dead "machines made this")

Too much to review here, but overall I am immensely impressed with the talent
at Google and their potential to change the world. It's truly an incredible
thing to watch.

I also feel like if you took a bunch of hopelessly naive engineering grads,
gave them 100 Billion dollars, and turned them loose on the world, you'd have
a Google. That both a compliment and a critique. I strongly suspect that
Googlers aren't all wearing superman capes and flying around the planet,
looking for evil villains. Much of it today must be tediously boring.

But "files are so 1990"?

We are not going to reinvent the mainframe as the internet. At least I
sincerely hope not. No matter how many super-incredible geniuses we throw at
it, there are really good reasons that have nothing to do with 1990 that lead
me to know that I want complete control over my data and my processing. That
doesn't mean that those things have to permanently live locally, but it sure
as hell doesn't mean that I have to "control" them through some cloud provider
using html. Maybe I'm smoking crack, but it seems to me we're just proving
that old saying "you can have too much of a good thing"

Hopefully one day it'll be 2025 and these same types of forward-thinking
people (I consider myself one) will have moved beyond rigid cloud/client
thinking and be saying "the cloud is so 2010, you know?"

