
Google is rebranding storage plans as “Google One” - Mononokay
https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/14/say-hello-to-google-one/
======
ianstormtaylor
I think this article is missing the bigger picture—this isn't about storage.
This is Google trying to copy the success of Amazon Prime.

They're going to try to unify lots of different benefits under a single, high-
value subscription. The storage plans and priority support are just the first
benefit they've tied to the subscription.

> In addition to access to experts, the company also promises to provide
> subscribers with other benefits. Google One’s director Larissa Fontaine told
> me that those could include discounts on hotels you find in Google Search,
> preferred rates for other Google services or credits on Google Play. “We
> hope to build those out over time,” she noted.

That would make more sense as to why they're "rebranding" these plans an not
just updating Google Drive's pricing plans. "Google One" isn't a single
product, it's a single subscription across many products, just like Amazon
Prime.

Of course, I could be wrong.

It does seem like a weird way to launch the subscription if that's what
they're trying to do, since the announcement goes deep into the weeds of
storage. And the low-end plans seem much too cheap to be able to add
meaningful benefits to in the future.

Even the idea of multiple tiers of the subscription might be too complicated.
One of the nice things about Prime is that although it's expensive, there's
only one option.

Seeing as this is Google we're talking about, I could imagine this new
subscription will have incredible amounts of churn in branding, pricing and
benefits along the way, and probably end up as a confusing mess in the minds
of customers. Amazon's Prime took a very different route. It started out as a
very clear subscription service for cheaper shipping, and then added more and
more benefits as time went on. These days it's a little confusing, but it
didn't start that way. If Google already can't get the messaging to be clear,
it doesn't bode well for them adding lots of orthogonal benefits in the future
and keeping it all sane.

I bet we'll see a Stratechery article about Google One in the context of
Amazon Prime soon.

~~~
donald123
If this is really the case, then I would say the name sucks. It's hard to know
what 'Google One' means from just the name. And there is 'Android One', which
is designed for low-end devices, it would really confuse people when they talk
about android one, google one. I can see more people will refer it as "google
one drive", and microsoft also has its "One Drive", that's even more confusing
to all the average users.

~~~
hk__2
> If this is really the case, then I would say the name sucks. It's hard to
> know what 'Google One' means from just the name.

It’s also hard to know what "Google" means from its name. And "Windows". And
"Bing". And "Facebook", "Twitter", "WhatsApp", "Amazon", "Yelp", "Pocket",
"Chrome", "Firefox", "Safari", "Uber", "Steam", and many more.

~~~
donald123
I guess what I meant by "hard to know" is less confusing. All the names in
your example cannot be easily confused with other product or brand. But
"Google One" is the other way around.

~~~
hk__2
I think it’s only because they’re well known. "Amazon" could be a supermarket
selling organic food; "WhatsApp" some site to recommand apps; "Facebook"
another site to make books out of pictures of your family; "Uber" and "Bing"
pretty much anything.

------
crazygringo
> _free one-tap access to Google Experts for help with any Google consumer
> product and service._

This is _huge_. Together with having removed ads that scanned your e-mail from
consumer Gmail, it looks like Google's consumer offerings could actually be
changing course from "you're the product" to "you're the customer" \-- or at
least be giving you the choice.

Of course, you could always get a single-seat G Suite for business account for
$5 or $10/mo. with 24/7 phone support too, but it was a little too complicated
and inflexible for most consumers.

~~~
lossolo
There is always a reason for everything with Google. They didn't provide
support for years. Considering what they showed lately with restaurant
booking, what I think is actually happening is that Google want a huge data
set for support calls/chats to use it as training data for their ML systems.
Then they will present fully featured customer support product based on ML.

~~~
eitally
You're wrong. There's nothing nefarious or underhanded about this decision.

~~~
Misdicorl
Why would scenario in GP be nefarious?

~~~
eitally
imho, creating new data sucking pipelines (no matter whether for advertising
or model training) under the guise of a consumer service is at least slightly
nefarious.

~~~
xapata
I've heard the "this call is recorded for training" message for decades. Now
it's training a machine algorithm instead of a human one. Nothing really
changed.

------
vvanders
> Google already offered 24/7 support for paying business users with a G Suite
> account, but this is the first time it actively offers live support for
> consumers.

About fucking time.

I know so many people who will never purchase another Google product because
it's was literally impossible to get another human being on the other end of
the line.

~~~
throwaway40483
This is the reason I think Amazon will end up winning the cloud computing
race. Providing support is simply not in Googles DNA.

~~~
alehul
The cost of support has to come from somewhere -- is either Amazon or Google
generally cheaper for cloud computing? (I know ~nothing in this area). I could
definitely imagine a market for both a cheaper service that's lacking support
and a more expensive one that offers increased support.

With that said, with Amazon's efficiency in logistics, I could definitely
imagine them implementing support at a negligible cost.

~~~
Operyl
Amazon.com’s support is so terrible, even for those easy consumer questions I
sometimes have. Their AWS support is amazing though.

------
pgt
The naive name for this product bundling would be Google Bundle, GBundle, but
that would rub regulators the wrong way.

The first rule of UX and branding is: don't make me think. Using a digit in a
brand name is a question mark, just like Google Plus. Or was it Google+? It
gets in the way of the meat of your message.

Why would Google would rub up against Microsoft OneDrive with Google (One?)
Drive? Is it going to be Google1? 1Google? OneGoogle?

The Google Bundle/Spire thing could be called Google Together, or Google
Everything, or Google Red, and it would be as effective without the confusion.

I don't know what this is and the brand confusion pushes me toward other more
clearly defined storage services. I pay for Dropbox...because I know what it
does and it won't go away.

~~~
OrwellianChild
I understand the potential confusion, but do you think this has hurt the Xbox
One adoption? I think it's probably possible to execute a "One" branding
correctly, provided it gives the users a sort of "universal" experience ala
Prime.

~~~
deft
The Xbox One faced this problem too but on a smaller scale. An example of a
product that failed in large part due to its ambiguous and confusing name was
the WiiU. Is it a wii? Is it something else? Is it just the control? What is a
U?

------
fragmede
[https://abevoelker.github.io/how-long-since-google-said-a-
go...](https://abevoelker.github.io/how-long-since-google-said-a-google-drive-
linux-client-is-coming/) currently says 6 years 20 days and 1 hour since
Google claimed a Linux client is coming.

~~~
TwoNineA
The moment they come out with a Linux client, the moment I will be a customer.

------
ModernMech
After having to change their name from Sky Drive to One Drive following a
trademark dispute, I think maybe Microsoft might have something to say about
Google calling their online storage solution "One" as well.

I mean come on, I know it's a very generic name, but it's nearly identical to
one of their biggest competitors in this exact space.

~~~
throwaway40483
It's even worse. They already have something called Android One. I'm sure this
won't cause any confusion.

~~~
_sdegutis
And MS has Xbox One. What's with all the 1s?

~~~
l9k
What about the people who manage their 1&1 server from their OnePlus One?

~~~
choward
They just keep track of it in OneNote.

------
zantana
With storage it always seems that the devil's in the details.

Are there any upload/download caps in place? Are they documented?

Are they scanning it?

Downsampling it?

Checking it against some DMCA database?

What happens when Junior shares his Bluray rips with his buddies at school?

Are they blocking rclone? How about 6 months from now?

Net neutrality is toast, caps are the norm and they're closing the service in
6 months, but it will take you a year to get the files back, is there a
snowball offer?

After the one drive and amazon about faces, can anyone take them seriously.

~~~
agentdrtran
1) Yes, 750GB upload limit a day. Not sure about download. 2) no 3) No 4-5)
Maybe? Nobody I know who does this has been caught

~~~
chipperyman573
There's a daily 10TB download limit according to people on the internet BTW.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/802ygu/-/dustd...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/802ygu/-/dustd34/)

------
dguo
I'm happy to see the 200 GB plan. I use Google Drive instead of Dropbox
because I only have ~70 GB of data. Now if I hit the 100 GB limit, I can just
pay for an extra 100 GB instead of having to go all the way up to 1 TB. I
don't understand why Dropbox doesn't offer more pricing tiers. I'd happily
switch since unlike Google Drive, they have an official Linux client.

~~~
nafizh
Not only Dropbox is not adding more tiers for single users, they are actively
pushing everyone to a dropbox business plan.

~~~
sho
I am somewhat worried about Dropbox. They are giving every indication of
trying to "pivot" away from file storage into some kind of unwanted "shared
collaboration space" where I can "unleash the creativity of my team" or what
not. Just check out their company blurb:

> Dropbox is a modern workspace designed to reduce busywork-so you can focus
> on the things that matter. Sign in and put your creative energy to work.

NOOO!!!! Just store my files damn it!

------
pavel_lishin
> _Be among the first to know when Google One is available in your area._

What does my area have to do with an online storage offering? I'm not giving
them my zipcode.

Anyway, taking all bets on whether this doppelganger will be killed off, or
whether two more doppelgangers will be launched.

~~~
abakker
Yes, your area does matter. In some countries, there are requirements that
your data be housed in a data center in your country. They may not have this
option yet.

------
spacesarebetter
One of the reasons i prefer an independent storage service is because i don't
want to have everything in one basket. I use Google for Gmail and Photos. I
would rather keep my files with someone else. e.g like Dropbox or iCloud.

The downside is that Dropbox is expensive although it blows all the storage
companies in terms of features and stability while icloud is too basic.

------
kriro
"""That access to live experts — not some barely functional AI chatbot — comes
with every Google One plan"""

My guess is they want to collect enough data from these service interactions
to eventually replace the service people with AI (or even plan on A/Bing some
AIs right away to see how much people notice, sort of a crow sourced turing
test).

------
sofaofthedamned
When on earth will Google give custom domains the full Google consumer
experience? Like many people I did this before gsuite happened for my personal
account and I'm happy to pay for this.

------
throwaway40483
Ah yes. The good, old Google we all know and love. Introducing yet another
confusing name for an existing product.

------
abalone
Missing context: this is catching up to last year's iCloud pricing (200GB for
$2.99, 2TB for $9.99).

Not sure how the new support feature compares to free/paid Apple support
options. Not a lot of details on it yet.

~~~
mkirklions
Following up on this question of cost per TB.

Not trying to shill this crypto(because I dont know if it really works). But
this crypto claims to be selling 1TB/2$/mo

[https://siastats.info/storage_pricing](https://siastats.info/storage_pricing)

So is Sia coin actually cheaper than these big players? Or are there hidden
fees?

~~~
garblegarble
>because I dont know if it really works

Sounds like you have your answer?

~~~
mkirklions
No, I havent used the service.

I dont think its fair to make a conclusion without having evidence.

~~~
dragonwriter
No, the reason is that you (and other people) don't know if it works. Trust in
a brand can be a big factor in supportable price.

------
josefdlange
But... what is it?

~~~
simcop2387
Not entirely sure, but it looks like a new branding of Google Drive. Can't
tell from the announcement if there's more to it than that though.

edit: Maybe more of a compilation of google apps for business with drive?

------
dorfsmay
Not finding any details about it. Anybody knows if they'll finally be
providing Linux support?

------
bg0
Worth noting that it isn't available yet.

> Initially, Google One will only be available on a limited basis. If you have
> a paid Drive storage plan, you’ll be automatically upgraded to Google One
> over the coming months. Look out for an email with details on your new
> benefits.

------
amoorthy
Just a comment on branding.

I worked for RealNetworks a long, long time ago and I remember when we came
out with RealPlayer One in 2002. This was an effort to bring a bunch of
products together in the face of competition from MS and others. The vision
and company failed spectacularly.

The "One" branding strategy strikes me as a way to bring together disparate
offerings that people can't articulate easily to users and probably shouldn't
be bundled together. Maybe Google is about to do the same:

"Google One’s director Larissa Fontaine told me that those could include
discounts on hotels you find in Google Search, preferred rates for other
Google services or credits on Google Play".

------
kachurovskiy
Looks like we have 2 Google Ones now.

[https://one.google.com/](https://one.google.com/)
[https://onetoday.google.com/](https://onetoday.google.com/)

------
bb88
So wasabi (a Gdrive competitor) dropped their egress fees. So it's just
$4.99/TB flat rate. It doesn't surprise me that google wants to change it's
pricing structure.

~~~
tmd83
That seem really cheap doesn't it?

~~~
bb88
You still have the egress fees if you're using another cloud provider. But as
a general drive solution with an S3 clone, yeah it does seem possible.

------
discaler
> In addition to access to experts, the company also promises to provide
> subscribers with other benefits. Google One’s director Larissa Fontaine told
> me that those could include discounts on hotels you find in Google Search,
> preferred rates for other Google services, or credits on Google Play. “We
> hope to build those out over time,” she noted.

Giving you discounts if you use google search. Not sure they are using their
search dominance innovatively or abusing it to promote this.

------
dragonwriter
Having a distinct brand for the storage shared (currently) between Drive,
Gmail, and Photos rather than calling it Drive Storage is sensible.

The actual brand is distinctly non-communicative, and the vague ideas for
ancillary benefits seem a bit odd with no relation to the core product.

------
colemannugent
I like the pricing model, but why couldn't this just be an upgrade to Google
Drive?

On second thought, why couldn't this be a $9.99 a month bundle of YouTube Red,
1TB Google Drive, Google Play Music, some Google Voice credits, and add free
Google Search?

~~~
kyrra
It is an upgrade to Google Drive, per the Techcrunch article

> It’s also rebranding these storage plans (but not Google Drive itself) as
> “Google One.”

> Google will upgrade all existing storage plans to Google One accounts

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/14/say-hello-to-google-
one/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/14/say-hello-to-google-one/)

------
lumoon
Dropbox down 4% today so far.

~~~
hs86
They introduced a second 1 TB plan for twice the price with questionable added
value except for Smart Sync and their offerings with more storage space are
only made for teams.

Maybe it is time for me to switch away from Dropbox?

Previously, one of the main advantages of Dropbox was their reliable sync
client but this attribute is fading away: When I do many little file
operations on Windows (npm, TeX Live), I expect to see MsMpEng.exe to eat away
my CPU cycles. This is somewhat expected from an on demand antivirus scanner
and as a Windows user it is somewhat common to whitelist some project folders
or temporarily disable the AV before starting certain tasks. On macOS the same
thing happens thanks to Dropbox! Even outside of my Dropbox folder their sync
client seems to intercept all file operations and do some CPU-heavy
calculations on them. I don't know when this started and what the technical
explanation for this is but at some time the Dropbox client on the Mac started
to cause a system-wide performance regression.

What is the state of Google One sync client? In the past I read some bad
reports about it but after several rebrandings maybe it has matured
technically?

~~~
woolvalley
When you have two 'file monitoring' apps accessing each other's scan space,
they can interpret each other's access as edits and go into a CPU loop.
Dropbox and any other sync client will do this.

I generally look at AV as effectively useless and badly made, your system will
speed up a lot in general (independent of dropbox) if you stop using it.

> Some third-party apps access files in your Dropbox folder. Dropbox may
> interpret this access as edits to the files, and sync these perceived
> changes. If a third-party app continually requests access to your files,
> Dropbox will continue to sync, which will in turn lead to high CPU usage.

> This loop usually occurs with third-party syncing apps, backup apps, and
> anti-virus or security software, or when a third-party app is installed
> within the Dropbox folder.

> [https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/high-cpu-
> usage](https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/high-cpu-usage)

------
electriclove
Can we get Family Groups enabled for G Suite accounts? My family is on a G
Suite account and it is frustrating being unable to take advantage of any
Family features (sharing purchases, music, etc).

~~~
Havoc
A paid biz account can piggy back off a free one for fam music btw

------
mbesto
So, I've never been able to figure this out. If you pay for single-seat
G-suite (using my personal @gmail.com address) does it also eliminate ads in
gmail, etc (obviously not on search)?

~~~
ValentineC
> _If you pay for single-seat G-suite (using my personal @gmail.com address)_

You need your own domain to be able to use G Suite.

To answer your question: I don't recall ever seeing ads on the Gmail
interfaces of any of my G Suite email accounts.

------
Bromskloss
I miss Ubuntu One? :-(

~~~
Bromskloss
I accidentally typed a question mark, but I meant it to be an exclamation!

------
cphuntington97
Following in the trend of Google Hangouts, Google will eventually split the
services back into different products.

------
bge0
Where is my god damn native linux client?

------
amriksohata
Wow they undercut microsofts pricing

~~~
blackoil
for 10$ MS gives 5 account with 1TB each so total 5TB and office for each
account. Really hard to beat that deal.

------
profalseidol
Why is "One" so popular? A lot new buildings in my city has this word as well.

------
PhantomBKB
Now with Google Duplex, you may never know if the Experts are "real".

------
PaulHoule
Did they hire somebody from Microsoft to name this?

------
Havoc
This is getting renamed before end of year. Watch

------
roflchoppa
woah woah woah, you can talk to technical help with google products under this
same branch?

Sounds like they undercutting AppleCare ha

------
Walkman
I have a 32 TB machine sitting under my desk. It will return it's cost in less
than a year. Storage is very expensive in the cloud.

~~~
blackoil
It is multiple times replicated across geography, and available anywhere. So
it's more than a disk.

~~~
Walkman
I agree, but pretty sure that 90% of the average users doesn't need geo-
replicated safety. It's nice to have, of course, but does it worth it? You can
buy a couple of HDDs for multiple backup copies and it's an order of magnitude
cheaper.

------
chrisper
Out of all cloud storage providers, Google is the only one that can provide me
with great speeds (I have Gbit Internet).

------
knodi
Hope this leads to iCloud pricing drop.

~~~
heartbreak
iCloud is already at 2TB for $9.99/mo and has been since last year.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT201238)

------
th0br0
Not seeing the updated 2TB->$9.99 plan yet in Europe :/ Wonder whether this is
just for the US?

~~~
rapfaria
Not live yet.

------
transfire
Time travel is not as illogical as it might first appear. The paradox, say, of
you traveling back in time to kill your father before he impregnated your
mother is easily resolved -- it never happened and is never going to happen
because otherwise you would not be here to do it.

