

With an official description, Google Drive is more real than ever - froo
http://venturebeat.com/2009/01/30/with-an-official-description-google-drive-is-more-real-than-ever/

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eli
I think this is the most clear-cut case of people getting excited about a
product _solely_ because the brand name is Google.

Online file storage is boring. Dropbox is free and works really, really well.

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froo
Sound's like someone hasn't been keeping up with the GDrive rumours.

From what is being suggested, is that Google will be giving people the
equivalent of dropbox's premium services... for free.

I think dropbox is great, I have a free account and use it all the time, I'd
like to get a premium account if my needs ever get to that point - but if
Google can provide significantly more space + their brand recognition, it's
going to be hard to compete with.

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shimi
DropBox are excellent. But I'll move to Google the moment they will provide
the service because I'm using Android (Assuming that an Android client will be
coming out)

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DenisM
In the mean time one can use <http://www.jungledisk.com/> it keeps stuff in
S3, looks like a local disk drive, client-side encryption, standard amazon s3
rates + $20 for software itself.

You can also give your key to their middle-tier server and have web access to
your files.

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foobar2k
I love dropbox, but if google release basically the same thing, how are
dropbox going to survive?

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unalone
I would suspect that Dropbox has a pretty fanatic group of fans out there. I'm
one: Dropbox saved my ass when Boot Camp wrecked my hard drive. 7 years of
documents were all saved, even though I'd deleted them from Dropbox
previously. That's an _incredible_ service. I recommend it to everybody who
needs a good way to store stuff online, or share stuff.

Google isn't omnipotent. Orkut was a terrible social network because they just
didn't _get_ what to do. I'd guess same goes with that animated world they
made that just recently closed. While they're powerful, it's really hard to
beat out a truly stellar product, and Dropbox is one of the best I've seen.

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nickb
It's hard to compete with free. Google can afford to undercut Dropbox.

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run4yourlives
Many people view free as a reason not to use a service.

Clearly, if I was going to use the service as disaster recovery, I'd pay for
dropbox. (I use dropbox for free right now)

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nickb
Google's services are synonymous with free. I don't see many people freaked
out by it.

Competing with Google is like competing with MS in '90s... a really hard
proposition.

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run4yourlives
_I don't see many people freaked out by it._

Depends on your circle really. For personal stuff, I make full use of google.
However for anything business related my leash of trust would be a lot
shorter. I'd feel much more comfortable to pay for a service that gives me
someone to blame/sue should the response to a disaster be less than adequate.
You really just don't get this with google.

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charlesju
Google just needs to acquire Dropbox and scale them out.

