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As the decision seems to be deliberate, I'm interested why Google has chosen not to implement such a feature. I'm a paying GSuite customer. I'd love to be able

by ISL 4y ago

As the decision seems to be deliberate, I'm interested why Google has chosen not to implement such a feature. I'm a paying GSuite customer. I'd love to be able to NFS-mount portions of my home directory into Google Drive for access across platforms and sharing/collaboration with others. There's got to be a reason that Google Drive isn't interested in implementing linux mounts -- I'd be surprised if it is market share alone. The reason may be interesting/unexpected.

shadowgovt 4y ago
It's market share, but I suspect Google's numbers may be skewed here by their measurement system. They almost certainly have hard numbers on the percent of users accessing the UI via various platform configs, and the Linux numbers are low. Question is if that's because they haven't cracked into the market because they aren't offering desktop integration. The other interesting question is: what are Linux users using instead? Because that's Google's competition for this software, which implies how much they could make competing.
- blagie 4y ago
  My experience is that data-driven companies get into self-reinforcing circles: - Data shows not a lot of customers use Linux - Which leads to poor Linux support - Which leads to not a lot of customers using Linux That's not specific to this either. I've seen companies discount continents of people due to lack of customers on those continents, which was often due to inanely easy-to-solve problems. But if you only have 0.1% of your market in China, why bother with servers which are inside the Great Firewall? If 0.1% of your population is Spanish-speaking, why bother with i18n? Data driven companies have an inherent bias towards /current/ customers, and away from /potential/ customers....
  - r-w 4y ago
    Isn’t there some saying about analysts and how they often tell you what’s already the case, but almost never tell you what’s possible? I feel like that applies here.
- frontierkodiak 4y ago
  Lack of Drive integration was what kicked me to finally self-host a Seafile instance.

by ISL 4y ago

shadowgovt 4y ago

It's market share, but I suspect Google's numbers may be skewed here by their measurement system. They almost certainly have hard numbers on the percent of users accessing the UI via various platform configs, and the Linux numbers are low. Question is if that's because they haven't cracked into the market because they aren't offering desktop integration. The other interesting question is: what are Linux users using instead? Because that's Google's competition for this software, which implies how much they could make competing.

blagie 4y ago
My experience is that data-driven companies get into self-reinforcing circles: - Data shows not a lot of customers use Linux - Which leads to poor Linux support - Which leads to not a lot of customers using Linux That's not specific to this either. I've seen companies discount continents of people due to lack of customers on those continents, which was often due to inanely easy-to-solve problems. But if you only have 0.1% of your market in China, why bother with servers which are inside the Great Firewall? If 0.1% of your population is Spanish-speaking, why bother with i18n? Data driven companies have an inherent bias towards /current/ customers, and away from /potential/ customers....
- r-w 4y ago
  Isn’t there some saying about analysts and how they often tell you what’s already the case, but almost never tell you what’s possible? I feel like that applies here.
frontierkodiak 4y ago
Lack of Drive integration was what kicked me to finally self-host a Seafile instance.