5 ms·

GDrive is coming, 1GB free storage

42 points by ashley 17y ago

brk 17y ago
1GB?? That's almost a joke. Great, I can store 1/16th of my $50 thumbdrive online.
- spydez 17y ago
  It is a joke. Dropbox and Zumo Drive both give you twice that for free; it's amazing that Google with its millions of servers and 7 something GB Gmail accounts can't do better than a lousy 1GB free.
  - RyanMcGreal 17y ago
    True, but that means you can store 1/8th of your $50 thumbdrive there. Where Google wins is the cost of buying additional storage, which is an order of magnitude cheaper than Dropbox. On the other hand, it doesn't look like Google offers synchronization so its utility as a backup environment is quite limited.
    - zmimon 17y ago
      > it doesn't look like Google offers synchronization so its utility as a backup environment is quite limited. Actually, my beef with all these services is the opposite: they rarely provide support to mount plain old drives under windows. It's always some crappy web interface or custom client that synchs stuff around which makes it non-interoperable with every other program I use that just wants to save something to the file system and know that it got to the cloud. I really don't get it - Windows supports WebDAV - what is so freakin hard about this? I really wish they would just give me a network drive to save to and let me worry about finding some synchronization software to mirror stuff there if that turns me on.
      - RyanMcGreal 17y ago
        Sounds like a business opportunity.
      - past 17y ago
        I wish Windows supported WebDAV in a sane way. They seemed keen to do so around Windows XP, but they apparently changed plans. They have two stacks, the more standards-compliant one (Web Folders) is deprecated and won't run in many new versions of Windows and the old one is way too buggy and suffering from bit-rot.
  - electromagnetic 17y ago
    It's a yet-to-launch product from google. GMail accounts have grown significantly in size since release and were invite only for a fair amount of time. From what I've read GDrive is open to everyone, not an invite only, so the small size on release is likely simply to work out stability issues. I won't be surprised if in a year the free storage offered had already quadrupled.
- chris24 17y ago
  In the comments, a Google Docs team member mentions "Yes, the storage is shared between Picasa Web Albums, Gmail and Google Docs." Maybe that's only for paid, add-on storage, though.
- s3graham 17y ago
  It's only $.25/G/year for more, which is way below say, S3 if you're only using S3 for personal storage.
  - Dobbs 17y ago
    Which is well over the $100 that I spend to add another 1.5TB to my already running file server.
    - dagw 17y ago
      For $100 I'm assuming you didn't get mirroring, hot spare and off site backup for the 1.5TB of data. Storage is cheap, backups and redundancy is what you pay for.
      - brk 17y ago
        No, but you get way faster access times and full control of your data and how you use the storage space. Cloud storage is neat, but quite frankly "the cloud" still has not proven, to me, to be reliable enough for my personal tastes yet. Layer on top of that the fact that Google isn't really earning high marks these days for customer service.
- og1 17y ago
  I've been happy using Window Live SkyDrive. Has a smaller file size limit of 50MB, but gives you 25GB for free.
  - colonelxc 17y ago
    Thanks, did not know this existed. On further digging around, I see that Office Web Apps are coming soon. Looks like Microsoft is pushing back hard against its competitors. The SkyDrive still needs a native client to be as useful as DropBox, but it's a step in the right direction.
    - elblanco 17y ago
      I'm actually surprised that Microsoft has not yet made a "skydrive" drive in explorer that natively and seamlessly integrated with this service. From a perception standpoint, I hesitate to use this because it seems that MS doesn't yet have full faith in this service.
      - aniketh 17y ago
        Skydrive explorer [http://skydriveexplorer.com/index.php http://skydriveexplorer.com/index.php] offers integration with Windows Explorer
        elblanco 17y ago
        Thanks for the link. I also went out and found this one http://www.gladinet.com/ http://www.gladinet.com/ which offers mountings for google docs, picasa and a bunch of others...
      - altano 17y ago
        You probably want Windows Live Mesh if that's why you're looking for. It's like Dropbox, but a bit more complicated/flexible, has more free storage, can sync any folder on your system, does p2p syncing, works through firewalls without configuration, etc.
icey 17y ago
I hope they've figured out that customer support is more than a half-baked web portal. I can already see the submissions coming in the first time someone even thinks Google has lost one of their files and ends up having to deal with the atrocious Google support machine.
onewland 17y ago
Note that this article does not cite an official source.
- eli 17y ago
  Yes it does. http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/upload-and-store-your-files-in-cloud.html http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/upload-and-store-your...
capablanca 17y ago
Again?
johns 17y ago
Existing thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1047977 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1047977
- ashley 17y ago
  Mea culpa, I didn't see that link. This article is not from the official Google blog. It adds screenshots of uploaded files and an interesting link to a rumored early description of the storage system, which makes me wonder where Google is heading with this storage system at only 1GB, since it's clear that others already offer much more storage. Anyway, what is the usual habit for similar stories? should I delete this link to clean up HN?
charlesju 17y ago
Who wants to start taking bets for when Google buys Dropbox.
- old-gregg 17y ago
  Something tells me that as far as acquisition offers go, Dropbox guys are doing fine. Probably just haven't found a perfect match/price yet. :-) My personal needs/habits don't quite fit their model, but as a technologist and entrepreneur I absolutely love Dropbox technology and their business model. And it's always a pleasure to point people to their website and inevitably get a warm "THANK YOU" back via email. Making people happier through software, even if it's not mine, has always been my reason to be in this business.
- hop 17y ago
  The Dropbox guys have done a hell of a job and I use it everyday. I could see Google, maybe even MS buying them. The flip side is Google has more than enough resources to make it themselves and they could make it fit natively into G Apps. DropBox also has a lot of expanding to do - sharing other folders, etc. and it may be wiser for them to continue growing. I think a more flexible payment structure could make them a lot more money too.
  - brianobush 17y ago
    My take on a dropbox purchase would be to get an existing customer base - some of which pay for extra space. I guess google doesn't have an issue getting customers though.
    - netcan 17y ago
      Maybe Zoho should buy it.
adriand 17y ago
I use git and github for my cloud storage. And I try to do as much writing as I can in plain-text documents so I get nice version histories. And there's nothing better for (text) documents with more than one contributor.

42 points by ashley 17y ago

brk 17y ago

1GB?? That's almost a joke. Great, I can store 1/16th of my $50 thumbdrive online.

spydez 17y ago
It is a joke. Dropbox and Zumo Drive both give you twice that for free; it's amazing that Google with its millions of servers and 7 something GB Gmail accounts can't do better than a lousy 1GB free.
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  True, but that means you can store 1/8th of your $50 thumbdrive there. Where Google wins is the cost of buying additional storage, which is an order of magnitude cheaper than Dropbox. On the other hand, it doesn't look like Google offers synchronization so its utility as a backup environment is quite limited.
  - zmimon 17y ago
    > it doesn't look like Google offers synchronization so its utility as a backup environment is quite limited. Actually, my beef with all these services is the opposite: they rarely provide support to mount plain old drives under windows. It's always some crappy web interface or custom client that synchs stuff around which makes it non-interoperable with every other program I use that just wants to save something to the file system and know that it got to the cloud. I really don't get it - Windows supports WebDAV - what is so freakin hard about this? I really wish they would just give me a network drive to save to and let me worry about finding some synchronization software to mirror stuff there if that turns me on.
    - RyanMcGreal 17y ago
      Sounds like a business opportunity.
    - past 17y ago
      I wish Windows supported WebDAV in a sane way. They seemed keen to do so around Windows XP, but they apparently changed plans. They have two stacks, the more standards-compliant one (Web Folders) is deprecated and won't run in many new versions of Windows and the old one is way too buggy and suffering from bit-rot.
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  It's a yet-to-launch product from google. GMail accounts have grown significantly in size since release and were invite only for a fair amount of time. From what I've read GDrive is open to everyone, not an invite only, so the small size on release is likely simply to work out stability issues. I won't be surprised if in a year the free storage offered had already quadrupled.
chris24 17y ago
In the comments, a Google Docs team member mentions "Yes, the storage is shared between Picasa Web Albums, Gmail and Google Docs." Maybe that's only for paid, add-on storage, though.
s3graham 17y ago
It's only $.25/G/year for more, which is way below say, S3 if you're only using S3 for personal storage.
- Dobbs 17y ago
  Which is well over the $100 that I spend to add another 1.5TB to my already running file server.
  - dagw 17y ago
    For $100 I'm assuming you didn't get mirroring, hot spare and off site backup for the 1.5TB of data. Storage is cheap, backups and redundancy is what you pay for.
    - brk 17y ago
      No, but you get way faster access times and full control of your data and how you use the storage space. Cloud storage is neat, but quite frankly "the cloud" still has not proven, to me, to be reliable enough for my personal tastes yet. Layer on top of that the fact that Google isn't really earning high marks these days for customer service.
og1 17y ago
I've been happy using Window Live SkyDrive. Has a smaller file size limit of 50MB, but gives you 25GB for free.
- colonelxc 17y ago
  Thanks, did not know this existed. On further digging around, I see that Office Web Apps are coming soon. Looks like Microsoft is pushing back hard against its competitors. The SkyDrive still needs a native client to be as useful as DropBox, but it's a step in the right direction.
  - elblanco 17y ago
    I'm actually surprised that Microsoft has not yet made a "skydrive" drive in explorer that natively and seamlessly integrated with this service. From a perception standpoint, I hesitate to use this because it seems that MS doesn't yet have full faith in this service.
    - aniketh 17y ago
      Skydrive explorer [http://skydriveexplorer.com/index.php http://skydriveexplorer.com/index.php] offers integration with Windows Explorer
      - elblanco 17y ago
        Thanks for the link. I also went out and found this one http://www.gladinet.com/ http://www.gladinet.com/ which offers mountings for google docs, picasa and a bunch of others...
    - altano 17y ago
      You probably want Windows Live Mesh if that's why you're looking for. It's like Dropbox, but a bit more complicated/flexible, has more free storage, can sync any folder on your system, does p2p syncing, works through firewalls without configuration, etc.

icey 17y ago

I hope they've figured out that customer support is more than a half-baked web portal. I can already see the submissions coming in the first time someone even thinks Google has lost one of their files and ends up having to deal with the atrocious Google support machine.

onewland 17y ago

Note that this article does not cite an official source.

eli 17y ago
Yes it does. http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/upload-and-store-your-files-in-cloud.html http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/upload-and-store-your...

capablanca 17y ago

Again?

johns 17y ago

Existing thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1047977 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1047977

ashley 17y ago
Mea culpa, I didn't see that link. This article is not from the official Google blog. It adds screenshots of uploaded files and an interesting link to a rumored early description of the storage system, which makes me wonder where Google is heading with this storage system at only 1GB, since it's clear that others already offer much more storage. Anyway, what is the usual habit for similar stories? should I delete this link to clean up HN?

charlesju 17y ago

Who wants to start taking bets for when Google buys Dropbox.

old-gregg 17y ago
Something tells me that as far as acquisition offers go, Dropbox guys are doing fine. Probably just haven't found a perfect match/price yet. :-) My personal needs/habits don't quite fit their model, but as a technologist and entrepreneur I absolutely love Dropbox technology and their business model. And it's always a pleasure to point people to their website and inevitably get a warm "THANK YOU" back via email. Making people happier through software, even if it's not mine, has always been my reason to be in this business.
hop 17y ago
The Dropbox guys have done a hell of a job and I use it everyday. I could see Google, maybe even MS buying them. The flip side is Google has more than enough resources to make it themselves and they could make it fit natively into G Apps. DropBox also has a lot of expanding to do - sharing other folders, etc. and it may be wiser for them to continue growing. I think a more flexible payment structure could make them a lot more money too.
- brianobush 17y ago
  My take on a dropbox purchase would be to get an existing customer base - some of which pay for extra space. I guess google doesn't have an issue getting customers though.
  - netcan 17y ago
    Maybe Zoho should buy it.

adriand 17y ago

I use git and github for my cloud storage. And I try to do as much writing as I can in plain-text documents so I get nice version histories. And there's nothing better for (text) documents with more than one contributor.