
Google Drive detailed: 5 GB of free space, launching next week - Braasch
http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/04/16/google-drive-detailed-5-gb-for-free-launching-next-week-for-mac-windows-android-and-ios/
======
robomartin
OK, so now when they suspend your Google account you also get to experience
loosing whatever you had in Google Drive.

Just for this I am converting my Dropbox account into one of their paid
packages to do my part in ensuring they stick around.

One would hope that at one point Google might start to realize that the way
they are handling accounts could work against their own interests. I --and I
am sure others-- have exactly zero interest in touching any Google product
other than Analytics because it can all go "poof" overnight if an algorithm
doesn't like something you did somewhere...and you'll never know why and never
have real recourse to attempt to fix it.

Just to be clear: I love just about everything Google has done and what they
generally stand for. The one thing I hate viscerally is their approach to
customer-no-service and how that relates to accounts. This aspect of what they
do and how they behave is nothing less than moronic and possibly evil.

~~~
tiziano88
Google has a brilliant customer service, it's just that many people do not
understand the meaning of the term "customer". If you use their free services,
you are _not_ a customer; if you do pay for it, then you get proper support
and everything. It seems pretty fair to me.

~~~
stock_toaster
> if you do pay for it, then you get proper support and everything

I wouldn't call it 'proper' support.

Last company I was at (2 years ago or so) got pretty awful support, and we
paid for google apps (50 bucks a person per year, plus whatever the integrated
postini cost [$5 a month per user or something?], for 100+ people). It was a
minimum of 1 or 2 day turnaround for support, via email only for anything
other than 'the entire site is down'. Not sure if that has changed or not
since then.

------
jacquesm
We've seen this before. It was called google video. Google ended up buying
youtube because even they could no longer deny they'd lost the battle and they
couldn't risk it going to a competitor.

Dropbox is in for a rough ride, as long as they can maintain focus and quality
(beat them at customer support, that should be a walk in the park) they'll be
the biggest YC exit ever once Google has run its course with the Google Drive.

~~~
feral
There are huge network effects at play with youtube. People discover new
content (related videos) as they browse the site.

With Dropbox, it seems, to me, like there are much fewer network effects at
play. I don't know what percentage of activity on Dropbox involves sharing
between Dropbox customers, but I'd guess its low?

I also think its a big deal that I already sign into my Google account on
every computer I use; if my files are just going to be there, with my docs,
mail and calendar, I'm probably not going to use another service.

~~~
ry0ohki
I don't know, that's one of the biggest benefits of Dropbox, I tell someone
I'll add a shared drive and 9 times out of ten they already have a Dropbox
account (in my tech world bubble at least)

~~~
nostromo
Times they already have a Google account: 10/10

~~~
GoodIntentions
Yeah, but some folks have come to the same conclusion as jacquesm ( above )
and use the big G as little as possible.

Sure, I have a google account. I almost never use it. For me, the epiphany
came when my adsense account was suspended years ago. For what I never found
out. I appealed and was reinstated. I then pulled adsense from every site.
Lesson learned, and I don't need to learn it again.

------
kylec
I'm hoping this will compel Dropbox to reevaluate their pricing structure.
Storage from Google is an order of magnitude cheaper than Dropbox - paid
storage starts at $5/year, and for the same $100/year as the cheapest Dropbox
account (50GB) you get 8x the capacity.

~~~
machrider
Dropbox is running on top of S3. If you look at the S3 pricing per GB for
storage and bandwidth, it's not exactly cheap. Back of the envelope, I'm
guessing a 50GB account costs Dropbox something like $3-$4 per month. Their
$9.99 plan can't really go down by an order of magnitude and still be
profitable.

~~~
johns
The likelihood that Dropbox is paying the rack rate is near 0.

~~~
jrnkntl
That, and there are a lot of the same files stored across accounts; DB stores
it 'once' and delivers it to all the people with the same hash of that file.

------
kyouens
Should I worry about my privacy if I use this "free" service? I don't really
want them to serve me targeted ads based on the contents of my Google Drive. I
don't know whether they plan to do anything like this, but still. Giving
Google access to my files (in addition to my email, social network, voice
mail, contact list, calendar, and reading preferences . .) makes me uneasy.

~~~
mhurron
> Should I worry about my privacy if I use this "free" service

You should always worry about your privacy. Paid service or not.

Google makes its money building a profile about what it knows about you. In
the light of placing files there, make of that what you will.

~~~
kyouens
Yes, I think you're right. I guess my feeling is that I would rather pay for
the service. That way I am the customer, I'm not the product.

~~~
fps
I've read that google's main goal for these free products is to increase the
amount of time people spend online and not to monetize every bit of
information that they come across. The more time people spend online, the more
people see adsense ads. That's why Chrome and Android aren't spying on
people's browsing habits like they technically could be, for example.

~~~
Drbble
And to profile everyone to optimize those ads. People watch plenty of ads on
TV. Google is rich because they have very special data used to price the
inventory effectively.

------
MatthewPhillips
What specific problem does this fix for the Google ecosystem? This feels very
Microsoftian. Very "we must compete in every market" without good reason.

~~~
ajross
Google got its start by walking into an existing (and frankly much more
mature) market for search and competing with the existing players "without
reason". Likewise advertising was pretty well served before they showed up.
And I'm pretty sure email predates their dominant platform there, too. I'm not
sure what's "Microsoftian" about this in particular, but it's certainly
"Googly".

Honestly, this (and a lot of the other posts here) sounds more like sports
cheering to me than analysis. Dropbox is part of the "YC team", so their
competitors are the bad guys?

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I neither own Dropbox stock nor know anyone employed by them, so the poisoning
the well wasn't necessary.

I'm talking strictly about Google. It's not 2004, Google is sitting at enough
poker tables right now, they don't need to join another unless there is a very
good reason to do so (a hole in their ecosystem, for one).

~~~
ajross
I have no financial stake in the New England Patriots, nor do I know anyone
employed by them. I still hate Peyton Manning (OK, poor analogy this season,
but still).

The final sentence seems ridiculous on its face. Read simply, it sounds like
you think Google shouldn't be doing product development at all. There's a word
for tech companies that stop "joining new tables": "stagnant".

------
goronbjorn
In terms of the business side of this, I think many people are missing the
potential Google has with integrating this into Google Apps. A very, very
large number of businesses use Google Apps for email/calendar.The whole
enterprise cloud storage market is very crowded right now, and Google would
have a huge advantage in terms of having that initial foot in the door.

------
rkudeshi
This doesn't seem to have any new details on the service other than that its
5GB and launching on Mac/Windows/iOS/Android, which is all in line with
expectations.

Given all the recent leaks, it really doesn't seem like Google's doing much
more than cloning Dropbox.

Was I the only one expecting Google to knock this one out of the park, a la
Gmail's introduction?

~~~
halo
A Dropbox clone with a better Android client would make me switch immediately.

The Android Dropbox client doesn't even let you download folders at once, only
individual files.

~~~
jpadkins
just curious.. what file types do you want on your phone?

I don't have a use case for mobile file syncing for myself.

~~~
karlmarxman
If you have a decent-length metro commute to work, you could move a couple
documents that you wanted to look over into your dropbox folder from your
computer at home and open them up from your phone on your way in or during a
lunch break.

------
gouranga
Seriously - 5Gb in 2012?

For any Windows users, just use SkyDrive and Windows Live Mesh - it works
wonderfully, is very reliable and has a decent TOS which respects user privacy
and your data. You get 25Gb for free, OneNote (which rocks), Word and Excel
online. All work transparently with Office on the desktop and office on
Windows Phone.

My data is synchronised flawlessly between my three PCs and Windows Phone (and
has done for the last 3 years, bar the phone which is a new addition). It
never resides entirely in the cloud - it is mirrored everywhere so there is no
risk if the account is pulled.

It generally feels like I have one computer.

It's how it should be done and is very under appreciated by the tech
community.

~~~
riobard
_It's how it should be done and is very under appreciated by the tech
community._

Because the _tech community_ no longer use Microsoft products?

~~~
gouranga
The narcissistic, English speaking, vocal and startup side of the tech
community don't.

The rest of us do.

~~~
qxcv
GP has a valid point, Windows usership is less prevalent amongst those with
the technical know-how to install and use Windows alternatives than in the
general public.

Google don't have a vested interest in operating system compatibility outside
of mobile, meaning that they can open themselves up to a larger potential
market than Microsoft have with Skydrive.

------
Inufu
The article mentions 23 GB of storage upgrades for HTC users. Can I also get
that on my old HTC Desire S? Or do I need a new phone for that?

~~~
Raphael
It's part of the pre-installed Dropbox application on newer HTC phones. Some
people have copied it and used it on other phones to get the storage upgrade.

~~~
camiller
...plus I think it says "...for two years" or something to that effect.

------
roel_v
If this thing works properly on Android, I'm dropping Dropbox in a heartbeat.

~~~
computerbob
What doesn't work for you on dropbox for android? I use it all the time and am
wondering what sort of things I might be missing.

~~~
roel_v
Also, Dropbox is getting progressively _worse_ over time, rather than better.
The v2 of the Android client was even worse than v1 (although to be honest I
don't remember in detail what it was that changed, just that it was a real
nuisance when it changed, I don't use the 'official' client on Android any
more). To be fair though, I just checked the Dropbox blog, and it seems that
they did add _file renames_ to v2. So, I guess that's one thing that got
better. _rollseyes_

The recent 'update' to the web UI is worse than what they had before - less
information, navigation and discoverability have gotten worse, so much
potential yet so little progress being made.

I'm saying all this as a Dropbox for Teams subscriber, I'm paying these guys
800 USD / year, so I'm not a freeloading whiner.

------
stuartmemo
My ideal storage solution would be one where I'm not restricted to syncing my
own local data. I want to be able to upload it to the cloud then delete it
from my HD.

This is the mentality I'm used to from Gmail. Everything is archived online
and I don't need a local copy. This would surely tie in with the thinking
behind the Chromebook?

~~~
wvenable
> Everything is archived online and I don't need a local copy.

Even with Gmail, I hope you have a second copy of your data somewhere. You
never know when your account might just disappear.

~~~
ep103
Do you know a good method of going about this? Thunderbird's backup utility
(syncing to Gmail, downloading, then saving the thunderbird app data locally)
is broken. Each backup / restore via TBird lost another ~350 emails.

~~~
toomuchtodo
<https://www.backupify.com/>

I use it to backup both my personal Gmail account and my Google Apps work
account, as well as my Flickr account. Its cost effective, and helps me sleep
at night, considering my entire life is stored online.

------
jmcantrell
I guess Linux gets the shaft?

~~~
angryasian
its called rsync

------
tbergeron
I always loved Google for so much reasons. They knew how to bring amazing,
fast and useful stuff to the table but then they lost themselves trying to
make a "Walmart" out of themselves.

They [started to] (some may say they always did) imitate other successful
services, some with success and some with huge failures (many of their social
network attempts have been failures).

But since about a year, it seems like they're turning from the "good guys" to
the "bad guys". They try to kick every successful company out of their
specializations. (Kick Facebook with Google+, Kick Spotify with Google Music,
Kick Dropbox with Google Drive, etc).

I really hate the way they're taking to always get more and more of our data.
Sorry Google but after almost ten years of service, I'm currently moving all
my data somewhere else.

------
tdtran
Sorry for sounding cynical but I am realy curious about the quality of GDrive
client apps. The one for Android probably will be good. But I am unsure about
the other platforms. Check out Google's "native" GMail app for iOS to see what
I mean.

~~~
Drbble
It's not an app, it's a file sync. Check out the Contact Sync "app" on a Mac.

------
epaga
Since Dropbox (and presumably Google) store files only once globally, mapped
to the file's hash, it makes me wonder when Google (or Dropbox?) will let you
search and then add _anybody's_ (public) files to your cloud account with a
single click.

That means no more downloading from some slow web site, and then uploading it
to the cloud again. Since Google most likely already has the file you're
wanting somewhere, all you'd need to say is "I want that file, too" and it
will be added to your cloud account. Google could do their own version of
MegaUpload pretty easily that way...

------
idont
What about the most important feature: encryption. Can we use a private key?

~~~
Drbble
Why wouldn't you be able to? If you are allowed to store arbitrary binary
files, it's just bytes to Google.

------
nextstep
Congrats, Google. Only ~2 years after the idea was revolutionary.

------
jackreichert
8 years ago gmail launched with a whopping 1GB, back then it was HUGE. Have
storage costs plateaued so that now 8 years later the best they can offer is
5GB?

~~~
Drbble
When Gmail launched, quota was 1GB in numeric counter that was constantly
growing even while you viewed the quota on an otherwise static pages. Drive
may be similar.

Also, back then it was nearly impossible to fill 1GB with email and restricted
attachments. 1GB was mostly a gimmick. Now people can fill 5GB throttle only
for a day or two by their network uplink speed.

------
gojomo
'Drive' is kind of a backward-looking name – the evolution of both appliance
devices and the cloud means people have less reason to think of 'floppy
drives', 'hard drives' and 'flash drives' than ever before.

Also, the Google self-driving cars have had more popular attention lately than
their cloud storage feints... so many people seeing "Google Drive coming soon"
are going to think it's the computer-driver.

~~~
zerostar07
Since there is no driver, it will probably be Google Cars (tm)

~~~
Drbble
gCar. Already launched in China.

------
Shorel
I don't care too much about more free space (but it is good).

What I want and need: be able to sync different folders to different accounts
in the same computer (I can't do this in Dropbox).

Be able to choose whatever folder I want for the sync.

Be able to 'subscribe' to folders from third parties without affecting my free
space.

The first company to do this will win the market. (And it will compete
indirectly with SVN and Git when used for documents too).

------
est
I for one does not think it has any chance competing agaist Dropbox. Every
Google client software hasn't been updated for decades. What's the last time
you saw an update to that native Google Talk windows client? Google Desktop
for Windows? Desktop Search?

Google makes desktop clients in a half assed way. It will never be half decent
as Dropbox.

~~~
skystorm
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but at least in the case of Google Talk
you could argue that the client software has been superseded by web-based
interfaces and/or browser extensions.

And other programs like Google Earth and Picasa have received continued
updates.

------
web_chops
We worked on a startup product a few months which is currently shelved. It had
a file system like interface and simplified moving files between dropbox,
amazon S3, google docs and multiple accounts (any one with two dropbox
accounts ?).

With all this google drive news, its pretty tempting to bring it back to life
:)

~~~
nikcub
This is what the future of online storage will be, but it won't be
google/dropbox/amazon etc. but rather 'your wordprocessor'/'your email'/'your
social network' etc.

adding a compatibility layer between storage networks is a temporary fix for
when a standard is formed.

------
stuckk
eh. 5Gb? Skydrive has like 25

~~~
drivebyacct2
Skydrive is a sad joke that points out how many easy opportunities Microsoft
has to leap frog Android and iCloud. They already have a huge cloud platform.
They are have millions of Live users. They're finally integrating Live
accounts as Windows accounts.

They refuse to add dropbox like functionality to SkyDrive to make it possible
to just have a set of files synced between all Windows (8, specifically) and
WP devices. I've been told and have read various different reasons, but none
of them were good.

edit: Scrap this post, my information is embarrassingly outdated. Kudos to
SkyDrive. Glad to see Microsoft utilizing their Live accounts.

~~~
mmmmbop
Uh, they have a dropbox-like client coming out soon. Also, I far prefer their
web interface to dropbox's. I see no reason to continue using dropbox once
skydrive client comes out.

...unless you're on linux :)

~~~
freehunter
The beauty of Skydrive is, it's WebDAV. You can mount it in Windows, you can
mount it in OSX, you can mount it in Linux. There isn't a native client yet,
but it doesn't strictly need one to work at a basic level.

------
pritam2020
As usual, concerned about privacy.

------
danebaker
This is biting Dropbox in the arse in more ways than one: Dropbox has had
years to improve their service, add a huge amount of features, and take this
concept to new heights. What have they done? Redesigned their Web site? Gee.

------
Sami_Lehtinen
Adrive.com offers 50 GB of free space and has already offered for years.

------
JohnnyFlash
I won't be using this.

Google already have my emails, my search history, a chunk of my documents, a
chunk of my appointments. Now they can access the files on my computer? I
think not!

------
cdvonstinkpot
Sounds like they might use a webdav connection the way the story talks about
folders working. I was hoping for more from a story whose title uses the word
'detailed'.

------
wei2012
OMG...Finally arrived, Perhaps it is not another 20% project that they don't
care....

------
kirmaz
Ok so now they can analyze my file content too and serve ads based on that ;)

------
phogster
I think "free" should be in quotes.

~~~
ChuckMcM
It would be humorous if sometimes when you opened your file in your Gdrive it
was a media appropriate file containing an advertisement. Open it in a text
editor get a text file ad, open it in an mp3 player get an audio ad, open it
in a video viewer get a video ad. Not all the time of course, just now and
then.

~~~
K2h
You get my vote, not because I think that is a good idea at all, but I agree
that is about the most hilarious thing. Thats got to be Googles end game.

~~~
ppod
The ultimate endgame has to be a Google Online Bank, a Google Amazon, and a
machine learning algorithms that bypasses advertising altogether and just buys
you stuff before you even know you want it.

~~~
jpadkins
I think Google's ultimate endgame is a post-scarcity world. Where creators
just create.

------
RuggeroAltair
Same reason I don't want $everything-facebook I also don't want $everything-
google.

Plus google has little to zero experience at offering big products on non
unix/android platforms.

EDIT: I didn't literally mean zero, since I'm writing from Chrome

~~~
albertsun
Err.... Chrome? Google Earth? There are others too.

~~~
RuggeroAltair
Sorry, I just wrote too fast and didn't want to get into details. Of course I
didn't mean literally they had zero experience, I am writing from Chrome and
use Google Earth pretty often myself (SketchUp etc...).

I just wonder how many apple and windows developers they have and how many
projects they have to follow/develop.

Personally, I'd prefer Dropbox, since it's a company dedicated to one thing
and so far they have been doing it well.

I'm happy that google has their own product so that I can have more free space
and potentially it'll lower the price of such services in general.

If it gets much better than Dropbox I'll switch completely, but let's see what
this better is. For example, I don't need to edit documents with google docs,
since I can never manage to print anything decent with it. So for me,
integration of Google Drive and Google Docs wouldn't be a good enough extra
feature.

