
Google Drive: Finally coming this April - taylorbuley
http://gigaom.com/cloud/google-drive-finally-coming-this-april/
======
georgemcbay
"GDrive is the like the wolf in the fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Well, after
long history of false alarms, the storage drive might just see the day in
early April"

So... this year, like every year since 2005, GDrive may or may not be coming.

Thanks for the update, Om.

~~~
ryandvm
They should play the joke for all it's worth and release it on April Fools'
Day.

~~~
abraham
Gmail was launched on April first so I wouldn't put it past Google.

------
artursapek
I really hate snarky comments like these:

 _One whole gigabyte? Wow!_

 _Oh good. Now Google can mine your documents to find more ways to blast your
with advertising. Buh-bye privacy._

People really need to stop bitching about privacy and the like. Nobody is
stopping you from building your own server backup system in your basement with
as much space as you desire. If you use this technology Google has been
secretly working on for who knows how long now, for FREE, you can fucking put
up with ads or minor fees if you want more space. People feel so fucking
entitled these days.

~~~
Revisor
No, quite the opposite. The more people value their privacy, the more pressure
against invasive predatory practices and the better for all of us.

It's not a binary scale: Privacy or no progress. Services we use can respect
our privacy, can be paid by subscription instead of paid by data mining and
selling your whole life.

So "bitch" people and don't "fucking put up" with ads.

~~~
artursapek
Everyone values their privacy.

You think Google feels any pressure from blog comments like that? Well you're
wrong. It's pointless bickering - I've always disliked that about reading tech
news. People who have no idea how Google even operates and the technology
behind the products take for granted and who could never even write a solid
business plan seem to love complaining about inane details and playing victim.
I'm tired of reading it. Until you can prove Google is doing something wrong
or unethical, take your free service and stop complaining. Or switch to
another.

If you have criticism that can improve the product, that's different. But
these are just childish whines that don't accomplish anything. If Google is
overstepping some privacy line, prove it and get them some bad press, like
what recently happened with Path mining peoples' contacts. But Google are not
malicious predators, and nobody is forcing anybody to use their products, so
people need to stop being so melodramatic.

------
Kylekramer
The key differentiator for Google Drive would be online interfaces. I love
Dropbox to death, but the fact that when I am on a strange computer I have to
download a spreadsheet to make a minor edit and then upload again is
completely annoying. And it is mostly useless for media playing. If Google
gives me a box to store/sync stuff offline and makes Google Docs/Music/Picasa
seamlessly work with that box, I'd switch in a heartbeat.

~~~
xxbondsxx
On the other hand, Dropbox's integration into the native OS is one of their
best selling points. If I remember correctly, they actually had to do
something along the lines of code injection into Mac OSX's Finder in order to
get the dropbox-centric icons and options to appear[1].

Box.net only offers desktop sync to larger clients, and other competitors have
yet to beat the frictionless Dropbox experience on native computers.

The way Google could win would be auto-import from Dropbox, tight OS
integration, and online editing in Docs.

1: Here at 15:30 [http://blip.tv/pycon-us-
videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-how...](http://blip.tv/pycon-us-
videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-how-dropbox-did-it-and-how-python-
helped-4896698)

~~~
gst
box.net offers a webdav interface, even for their free accounts. That's an
open standardized interface for box.net vs. a proprietary client for Dropbox.

~~~
falling
True, but WebDAV clients are nowhere near the perfect user experience that the
proprietary Dropbox client provides (at least on OS X and Linux, I don’t know
about Windows).

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pitzips
If the prices are anything like what their current storage options are, it
will be the best option available.

Dropbox - Current options

50 GB ($99.00 USD per year) - 100 GB ($199.00 USD per year)

Google Storage - Current Options

20 GB ($5.00 USD per year) - 80 GB ($20.00 USD per year) - 200 GB ($50.00 USD
per year) - 400 GB ($100.00 USD per year) - 1 TB ($256.00 USD per year) -

~~~
jerrya
Yes, I'm very happy with the storage I pay for at Google. Hard to beat $5 for
20Gb.

I hope their prices stay that low.

That said, with Dropbox's versioning of files, I can see Dropbox arguing each
Gb you have there can really be much many more Gbs than what you seem to pay
for.

It will be interesting to see Google's features. What I value most from
dropbox is the versioning and the relatively seamless integration into the
operating system.

~~~
abraham
Any of the files in Google Docs format (docs, spreadsheets, presentations,
etc) already support versioning and history. I don't know how that effects the
total storage however.

~~~
lukebaker
Files in the Google Docs format do not count against your quota. Files not in
Google Docs format also support revisions, but each revision counts against
your quota.

------
gfodor
Am I the only one that saw that and thought "driverless cars this April?!"

~~~
nextstep
I wish. Google could have done this (the G drive) when it was originally
rumored (2006?) but instead waited until Dropbox had taken a majority stake in
the market. I'm scared that their autonomous car program will have a similar
fate. Google has been testing their autonomous cars for years and has logged
thousands of miles, but they don't seem to have any plans to push this
incredible technology to market. The largest roadblock (sorry for the pun) is
probably the need for new legislation on driver-less vehicles, but even if
these new laws are written soon, I am afraid Google will fail to move quickly
in this exciting new market.

~~~
bishnu
If legislation is the major obstacle, then what does it matter how long it
takes Google? This is everyone's problem.

~~~
agumonkey
And according to recent news it seems it will be quite some time before cities
can see automated vehicles. A bit sad to see the big technological step they
accomplished being blurred by other processes.

------
gfaremil
The main problem with Google Docs is that it is just too complicated - or
better to say, has some rules which are quite unique.

For example, normal people get very confused that you can have multiple files
with same name. Also the concept of collections is something quite broken
since they represented as "folders": yes great on a paper but people assume if
a document A in collection X is different document than the same document in
collection Y.

I wonder how the above things will map to local filesystem without confusion.

~~~
agumonkey
It would be nice to see a storage system demonstrating sets instead of
hierarchical disjoint partitions, that I find terribly unfit for human
activities since you can't really order things this way. After 30 years of
Personal Computing with `folders` it will be confusing, but I'd be interested
to see if people can re-adjust and adopt collections/sets.

------
lukebaker
Every detail points to them providing an local client for Google Docs. Google
Docs has: 1GB free, ability to upload arbitrary files, web preview of a
variety of file types (videos, music, documents, etc.), an API, Google Apps
integration.

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nextparadigms
Only 1 free GB? That seems highly unlikely. But if it's true, I think it will
be very disappointing.

~~~
brucehart
That has to be a mistake. You already can upload more than 7 GB using Google
Docs. It would be more in line with Google to offer 100 GB or 1 TB free and
really blow away the competition. I wonder if they have considered what it
would cost to offer 1 TB of storage vs. buying Dropbox. Most people would not
use anything close to the maximum and of course the storage costs will get
cheaper over time.

Google needs to give people a compelling reason to try out the service.
Remember when GMail launched in 2004 and 1 GB of storage space for e-mail
seemed crazy? I think Hotmail offered 4 MB of space at the time. You had to
constantly delete old e-mails to keep below the quota. Storing files in the
cloud is reaching a tipping point where it becomes mainstream. Google needs to
get a foothold now if they want to be the leader in this product category.

~~~
TillE
There's no chance of Google offering 1TB free to everyone in the world. Even
with just a small minority using their full allotment (there are plenty of
warez hoarders, photographers, and video makers out there), the cost would
quickly balloon into the hundreds of millions.

100GB is on the outer edge of plausibility. 10-20GB would be reasonable. One
is definitely not enough.

~~~
brucehart
Google has $44.6 billion in cash and short term investments at their disposal.
Dropbox was recently valued at $4 billion. If Google could spend hundred of
millions (or even a few billion) offering tons of storage space, you would
have to think might consider doing so over doing something like trying to buy
Dropbox. They would become the leader in the space almost overnight. At the
very least, I would expect them to offer unlimited storage for movies and
music purchased in the Google Play store (similar to Amazon).

~~~
abraham
With Googles new push to have all products making money it is unlikely that
Google will sink too much money into offering free Drive space.

------
nthitz
If they allow me to stream video off my GDrive like I can with Google Music I
am definitely in!

~~~
joejohnson
Maybe that's why Google weighed in on the Megavideo/Hotfile lawsuits.

------
stuckk
I have been using Microsoft LiveMesh/skydrive recently alongside dropbox and
it has been working flawlessly. What I like about is the huge space compared
to dropbox and that you can sync multiple folders without plug-ins or anything
hacky.

~~~
nessus42
I use LiveMesh too, and I like it. One of the things that I like about it is
that it doesn't follow symlinks. I really wish one of these sync services
(maybe the upcoming Gdrive?) would treat symlinks properly. I.e., sync them
opaquely rather than transparently.

In the meantime, I use scripts to sync my symlinks out of band. The only
service I can do this with is LiveMesh, though, since at least it is nice
enough to just ignore the symlinks, rather than do the wrong thing with them.

------
nextstep
I wouldn't be surprised if Google did finally release the GDrive. This would
follow the company's current trend of cloning successful businesses far after
a competitor has established market dominance. Google+ is actually rather well
built, but nobody is going to flock to it when there are numerous other social
networks that have the same (or more) features. Dropbox already solves the
problem that GDrive would tackle. Is GDrive going to have some killer feature
that will entice people to make the switch? Probably not. Also, I'll bet
GDrive won't have the platform coverage that Dropbox does, at least initially.

~~~
fl3tch
Moving your data is much easier than moving your entire social network. It
could be a matter of installing the GDrive sync client and pointing it at the
same folders you're already syncing.

~~~
joejohnson
But to the non-technically inclined (people who don't read reviews of file-
syncing services), they'll be wondering "why do I need this when I already
have something that does the same thing?"

~~~
NeutronBoy
That's where Google integration will play into it.

You need that file on your Android phone? It's there on the filesystem, no
need to open another app. Want to open a file in Google Docs? You click on it
in the side panel. Want to share a file on Google+? You just click the name,
no upload required. Want to email multiple files through Gmail? Click on them
from the nice web interface and don't waste time uploading. Want to post a
video to Youtube? Select it from your GDrive, and it appears on Youtube
instantly. Etc etc.

------
DLarsen
I'm very interested to see the privacy policy. Should we expect ads to be
"better targeted" to the extent that we use Google Drive?

------
pitdesi
Relevant: interesting HNsearch:
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=gdrive&...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=gdrive&sortby=create_ts+asc)

I like that the first one is Drew's YC app from 5 years ago. And then: GDrive
is here! in august 2007

This is an interesting story of why it was killed originally:
[http://allthingsd.com/20110425/how-google-killed-gdrive-
and-...](http://allthingsd.com/20110425/how-google-killed-gdrive-and-spiked-
its-skype-acquisition/)

